PRISONERS confined in protection cells at Mountjoy Prison should be put under special supervision, a jury recommended yesterday in the Dublin Coroner's Court.
The jury recorded a verdict of death by suicide on Joseph Brooks (25), of Harmonstown, Dublin, who was found hanging while on remand in the jail on February 27th last year.
A prison officer, Mr Francis Hoban, told the inquest that he took a telephone call from the deceased's mother on February 25th. She said her son was a drug abuser, that he owed £3,000 for drugs and that another inmate was "out to get him".
Mr Hoban said he reassured Ms Alice Brooks that her son would get appropriate medical treatment, and that he had been placed in a protection cell for which he had signed on committal to the jail.
Ms Brooks said her son had shown signs of depression as he thought he was about to receive a 4 1/2 year jail sentence in the Dublin Circuit Court on March 29th. He also showed suicide wishes and said he was going to hang" himself. He felt sorry for the heartbreak he had caused the family and claimed he would be better off dead.
Dr Bartholemew Luke Teeling, the prison's medical officer in charge, said the remand prisoner, had received 69.5 mg of Physeptone on December 26th for his addiction.
Under cross examination from Mr Michael Staines, solicitor for the Brooks family, Dr Teeling said he could not specifically recall meeting the prisoner on February 25th but it was not recorded that the deceased had asked for psychiatric referral or expressed any anxiety, otherwise help would have been provided.
Mr Staines said the deceased's family wanted to know why the deceased's anxieties and suicidal wishes were, not addressed by the jail's authorities.