The former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, has criticised new visiting restrictions in Mountjoy jail in Dublin for causing "very real hardship" to prisoners and their families.
Mrs Robinson said the arrangements, which require visitors to carry identification and to be designated in advance by the inmates, appeared to have resulted in a reduction in the numbers visiting. Acknowledging that the reforms were designed to combat drug smuggling, she insisted the approach was not a "people-centred" one and should be reconsidered.
Addressing the annual conference of the Irish Penal Reform Trust in Dublin, Mrs Robinson also called for the media to be allowed greater access to prisons, to help highlight conditions. She found it "strange" that when attempting to accompany prison inspection teams, journalists were "kept outside at the gate".
However, the former high commissioner also warmly welcomed the decision by the Minister for Justice to end the use of padded cells for mentally ill prisoners. In a letter read out at the conference, Mr McDowell said he found the use of padded cells "unacceptable" and had directed their replacement as soon as possible by new safety observation cells.
A senior probation officer at Mountjoy also defended the prison's new visiting arrangements, insisting to the conference that they were "very people-centred" and designed to protect vulnerable inmates from being bullied into accepting visits they didn't want, from others involved in drug smuggling.
The conference, which took the theme "Mental health in prisons: human rights and good practice," heard that the mentally ill were much more likely to end up in prison than other members of the population.
Dr Harry Kennedy, consultant forensic scientist at the Central Mental Hospital, cited new research carried out with his colleagues that shows 2.4 per cent of fixed-sentenced men and 4.1 per cent of life-sentence prisoners had an "active psychosis", such as schizophrenia.
In the population at large, estimates for the occurrence of such illnesses ranged between 0.1 and 0.4 per cent, he said: "so there's a huge over-representation of those with severe mental illnesses in the prison system". In addition to this, three of every four sentenced men had serious drug or alcohol problems when arrested.
Dr Kennedy said that most mentally ill people were in prison for the most minor of things - "public order offences, such as shouting in the street". They were also more likely to be homeless and to commit "hunger crimes," such as shoplifting. Lacking fixed addresses, they were then less likely to get bail: "So the system is working systematically against the mentally ill".
