One of Ireland’s most violent prisoners is suing the State after being kept in continuous solitary confinement for 3½ years.
Brendan Cummins (27) was placed in the National Violence Reduction Unit in the Midlands Prison immediately after his arrest in June 2019 for violent attacks in Dundalk, Co Louth, and has remained there since.
The unit opened in 2018 and is modelled on similar holding cells in the United Kingdom. It is designed for the most violent prisoners in the system who have repeatedly attacked staff. Inmates are given access to intensive counselling while their movements are tightly controlled at all times.
Boiling water
However, the unit has done little to address the violent tendencies of Cummins who in the last two years has assaulted three prison officers, including by throwing boiling water in the face of one after asking for some toilet roll to be brought to his cell. He attacked two more after learning one of them had made a statement to gardaí about the incident.
Earlier this year the prisoner told a psychologist he initiated rows with prison officers “as a way to stimulate himself and relieve boredom”.
In a report for the prisoner’s legal team, Dr Rioghnach O’Leary said this lengthy period of solitary confinement and “inhumane” treatment has caused Cummins’s hostile tendencies to intensify.
According to papers filed with the High Court, Cummins has been subject to Rule 62 since June 2019 which grants prison authorities the power to isolate him from the rest of the population.
Cummins has been subject to 23-hour lock-up this entire time. He is permitted one-hour exercise outside alone and is transported through the prison by officers in full riot gear and carrying shields, a practice known as “barrier handling”. His lawyers say his meals are pushed through his door.
His solicitor, Ciarán Mulholland, has submitted to the High Court these measures are “draconian” and “inhumane and degrading”. Dr O’Leary said the UN states solitary confinement lasting more than 15 days amounts to torture and that the effects on Cummins “will take years of psychotherapy to reverse”.
Cummins is seeking several court orders including one quashing the imposition of Rule 62 and a declaration that keeping him in solitary “is irrational and unreasonable”. The matter is due before the High Court again in January.
In a written response to Cummins’s lawyers, the Irish Prison Service said he meets all the criteria for housing in the unit and his status is kept under review.
The 27-year-old has been in prison for most of his life since the age of 16 and is considered one of the most violent inmates in the system.
Random attack
Between 2016 and 2019 he served two years in Portlaoise Prison, most of which was spent in solitary, for assaulting a guard. He was released in early 2019. That April he launched a random attack on a man in a Dundalk park, using a Stanley knife to cut the victim from his lip to his forehead.
The following month, Cummins was drinking with a group of people when he started to slash at one of them with a blade. He cut the man from the neck to the hips while saying “tell me I’m the surgeon. I’m the daddy” and ordering the others to film him. The victim managed to escape by jumping out an upper window and breaking his leg.
In June, heavily armed gardaí with shields entered Cummins’s house to arrest him. The suspect emerged from his bedroom and attacked them with a samurai sword, denting one of the shields, before being overpowered.
He is due to be sentenced for all three attacks in January.
