A prison reform campaigner says that plans to build the country's biggest prison in north Co Dublin will do nothing to address the growing problem of violence within Irish jails.
Fr Tony O'Riordan SJ, director of the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, said the plans for Thornton Hall prison would involve two large buildings holding at least 900 male prisoners.
Putting so many prisoners in a single location created the possibility that threats of violence and intimidation will undermine the regime, he said.
Fr O'Riordan's comments are contained in the forthcoming edition of Working Notes, the journal of the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice.
"The development of a new prison, especially one located on a spacious site like Thornton Hall, should be seen as an opportunity to design prison buildings in a way that would minimise the opportunities for violence within prison," he said.
"Small units within a prison, which would provide a full range of services in self-contained areas, could be part of the solution to prison violence.
"However, it appears that the option of having such small units is not even being considered for the design of the new Thornton Hall prison."
He said the plans to accommodate large numbers of prisoners in buildings with common facilities shared by hundreds of prisoners will result in a continuation of the violence that characterised Mountjoy and other large prisons.
"The result will be that, just as in the existing prisons, large numbers of prisoners in the new prison will be on protection.
"That will mean they will be unable to avail of the rehabilitative services that the authorities claim will be a key feature of proposed new prison complex," he said.
Fr O'Riordan was also critical of the plan to increase the number of prison places as part of the Thornton Hall proposals.
Instead, he said we should looking instead to reduce the use of imprisonment for less serious offences by radically developing non-custodial alternative punishments that would focus on the rehabilitation and restitution of offenders.
The latest official figures show there are more people in prison for theft and shoplifting than there are for violent crimes such as murder, manslaughter and sexual offences.
There are 647 people in jail for non-violent offences relating to property. This compares to 226 in prison for murder, 82 for manslaughter and 230 for sexual offences.
"Such figures once again confirm that there are substantial grounds for believing that we should be engaged in a prison reduction plan not a prison expansion splurge," said Fr O'Riordan.
