Prison overcrowding is at another crisis point with all secure jails having reached, or exceeded, capacity for the first time.
The number of male prisoners in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, has this week grown to 1,000 for the first time.
It is understood that more than 100 prisoners were sleeping on the floors of Mountjoy on Tuesday night when numbers reached a record 1,000.
Mountjoy – one of 12 secure jails in the Republic, with two open prisons also part of the system – was officially classified as being at 124 per cent of bed capacity this week. The women’s wing of Limerick Prison was the most overcrowded, at 163 per cent capacity. Some 91 women were on Tuesday night being housed in the facility, with a bed capacity of 56.
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The Prison Officers’ Association (POA) said prisoners were now being “packed” into any space that could be found, increasing tensions and violence and making the jails unpredictable and harder to manage.
“The pressure is huge and the danger of losing [control of] a prison has never been as high,” said POA general secretary Karl Dalton.
The Irish Prison Service said it “must accept into custody all people committed to prison by the courts” and had “no control over the numbers committed to custody at any given time”.
When the number of prisoners in prisons exceeded maximum capacity “interprison transfers and structured temporary release” were used to manage numbers.
Fianna Fáil Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan, in a reply to a Dáil question from party colleague Malcolm Byrne TD of the Wicklow–Wexford constituency, said the Government was committed to creating an additional 1,500 spaces over the next five years.
There had been an increase of 18 per cent, or €79 million, this year “to increase prison capacity and support prisoner services”. Some 300 new prison spaces had been created in recent years at Limerick men’s and women’s prisons and the Training Unit on the Mountjoy campus.
There were 5,185 prisoners in custody on Tuesday night, meaning the system was operating at 112 per cent of its bed capacity.
[ Overcrowding in jails is leading to ‘inter-prisoner violence’, inspector findsOpens in new window ]
In the last two years, since rules were relaxed to ensure more prisoners could be released early in a bid to alleviate overcrowding, the number of such releases has more than doubled. Some 566 inmates are on so-called “temporary release”, though it is open-ended and none are due to return.
Mr Dalton said E Block in Portlaoise Prison was now housing “only a handful” of political, or dissident republican, prisoners and could refurbished and brought into general use for up to 200 prisoners. Parts of the now closed old Cork Prison and the former Curragh Place of Detention could be refurbished to create additional spaces and alleviate the crisis.
Mr Dalton added that overcrowding was negatively affecting the opening hours of rehabilitative facilities, such as classrooms and workshops in jails, and leading to an increase in the already significant prison drug trade.
Separately, suspects in 40,348 crimes were given bail last year, an increase of almost 5,000 on 2022, according to Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald who in the Dáil described the figures as “shocking”.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin said there cannot be a “wholesale system where everyone who is charged is locked up”.
