Madam, - A report in your edition of November 20th highlights the overcrowding in the Dóchas Centre, the women's prison at Mountjoy. As a result there has been doubling up in single units and the Dóchas medical unit has been used for accommodation.
The knee-jerk reaction is that we need more prison places for women. However, a Council of Europe report (Recommendation No. R (99) 22 of the Committee of Ministers to Member States Concerning Prison Overcrowding and Prison Population Inflation, 1999) on prison inflation indicated that "the extension of the prison estate should rather be an exceptional measure, as it is generally unlikely to offer a lasting solution to the problem of overcrowding".
When the Dóchas Centre opened in December 1999 it was overcrowded, yet it had nearly double the capacity of the previous women's jail on the Mountjoy site. The proposed facility for women at the Thornton Hall prison complex will replace the Dóchas Centre and, once again, it will have double the capacity of its predecessor.
The question "Whom do we detain and why?" needs to be fully explored. This requires moving away from a focus on prisons to a focus on the criminal justice system, and on the poverty, deprivation, low educational attainment and poor health that characterise the women we detain.
If the number of prison places "is to a large extent a political calculation", as indicated by the Sub-Committee on Crime and Punishment of the Joint Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights (2000), then let us have a calculated debate. - Yours, etc,