TEAMS OF prison officers have carried out a full search of the State’s only dedicated women’s prison as part of an inquiry into how photographs of some of the women dressed in lingerie appeared in a Sunday newspaper.
The searches were conducted throughout yesterday at the women’s Dóchas Centre, part of the Mountjoy complex on North Circular Road, Dublin.
About 150 inmates were taken from houses in the jail where they live and placed in a gym area while the houses were all fully searched.
Such a large-scale search of an entire prison is believed to be unprecedented.
The Irish Timesunderstands the search teams were looking for camera phones.
The photographs in the Sunday Worldshowed some of the women dressed in lingerie and pictured in sexually suggestive poses.
Two of the women who featured in the published photographs were transferred from the Dóchas Centre to a female wing of Limerick Prison on Sunday.
It is understood yesterday’s operation was organised to search not only for phones but for other contraband such as drugs and makeshift weapons.
The Dóchas Centre was designed to hold 85 women but has been holding about 150 in recent months because of a lack of places for female prisoners.
Sources within the jail have said that the overcrowding has led to gang-based bullying, self-harm and drug taking at the facility, all of which were almost completely unheard of before the overcrowding reached chronic levels this year.
A decision to put bunk beds into rooms designed for one person prompted the early retirement of the former governor Kathleen McMahon.
She left earlier this year, saying her position had been made impossible.