Sir, - Conor Lally’s article (‘Overcrowding crisis as all prisons full’, Thursday, March 6th) highlights the alarming situation that all our prisons are now operating to capacity and beyond.
Crowded prisons have multiple consequences, some intended, some unintended. All negative. The sanction of imprisonment ceases to be a straightforward sanction of loss of liberty for the prisoner but takes on a whole new character when various forms of restrictions on living conditions, reduction of services and perceived punishments, kick in. Prison becomes a pressure cooker and life can become unbearable for prisoners and prison staff alike.
Forty years ago in 1985, a committee of inquiry established by the minister for justice and chaired by Dr TK Whitaker produced a wide-ranging report into the Irish penal system. It was an enlightened report and has underpinned much of the penal system that has operated for the last 40 years.
Since 1985, the population of the country has increased by little more than a third but the prison population has more than doubled to over 5,000. In his report in 1985, Dr Whitaker stated, “if the upward trend in prisoner numbers of the past 10 years were to continue for the next 10, an appalling situation would arise – some 4,000 prisoners to be accommodated by 1995″. The increase wasn’t as dramatic as feared, largely because hundreds of politically motivated prisoners were released in the 1990s.
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However, it is worrying that there is now a bulge in prison numbers disproportionate to the increase in the general population. This is despite the fact that two new prisons have been opened – one for women, the Dóchas Centre at Mountjoy in 1999 and one for men, the Midlands Prison in Portlaoise in 2000. Clearly, there have been new pressures coming to bear on the penal system over the last quarter of a century. After 40 years it would seem desirable to carry out an independent review of the Whitaker report and to take a fresh look at the demographics, the sentencing policy, the penal sanctions, the range of services and the alternatives to prison. - Yours, etc,
JOE COSTELLO,
Aughrim St,
Dublin 7.
