MORE THAN 40 prison officers at the centre of a major Garda investigation at Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison will not face criminal charges arising from allegations that they assaulted, bullied harassed and intimidated inmates at the jail.
However, a new system of investigating prisoner complaints has been established after significant shortcomings were identified in how the Irish Prison Service handled such matters.
The DPP received 46 investigation files from a Garda team established to investigate the claims, and has now directed that no prosecutions will be taken in 44 of the cases. Decisions are pending in the remaining two cases.
Some 67 allegations were investigated at the outset of inquiries by the Inspector of Prisons Michael Reilly and then the Garda.
The issue dates back more than two years and emerged not long after Judge Reilly was appointed inspector of prisons.
When he visited Mountjoy Prison to carry out an inspection on November 25th and 26th, 2008, he examined the prisoners’ complaints book and found insufficient detail on complaints made by inmates.
In some instances the name of the prison officer against whom the complaint was made was not entered. The book is maintained by staff and outlines all complaints by prisoners, up to and including allegations of serious assault.
Between November 2008 and February 2009, Judge Reilly received a number of allegations of ill-treatment of prisoners by a minority of prison officers.
When he again examined the complaints book, he noted 67 complaints between January 2008 and May 2009 that had not been investigated properly. He then requested a meeting with the secretary general of the Department of Justice Seán Aylward.
He outlined his concerns relating to the apparent lack of meaningful investigations into allegations by prisoners, up to and including complaints they had been assaulted by prison officers.
The then minister for justice Dermot Ahern met with the then Garda commissioner Fachtna Murphy and it was decided a Garda investigation team be established to examine the claims.
The team consisted of six detectives from Mountjoy Garda station, overseen by a detective sergeant and detective superintendent at Mountjoy and Store Street Garda stations.
Prison officers and inmates were interviewed. Investigations arising from the 67 complaints resulted in 46 files being sent to the DPP for consideration.
Despite the DPP recommending no charges in 44 cases, and with a decision pending in the two remaining cases, the prison service has taken it upon itself to overhaul the logging and investigation of prisoner complaints in all of its jails.
A new standardised complaints journal has been introduced into which full details of all complaints must be entered. A system of liaising with the Garda every month and updating the inmate in question is also being introduced.
Prison management has been instructed to continue with investigations even when the inmate who made the allegation has been released.
Prison governors have also been encouraged to be more visible in jails and have been told inmates should be assured by them that making complaints against staff will not lead to repercussions.
Governors have also been instructed to take disciplinary action against prison officers if there is evidence suggesting inmates have been threatened in relation to allegations they have made.
SECURITY CRACKDOWN DROP IN MOBILE PHONE SEIZURES
THE NUMBER of prisoners caught with mobile phones in the Republic’s jails fell last year following the introduction of enhanced security procedures aimed at keeping phones, drugs and other contraband from reaching prisoners.
Phone seizures across the State’s 14 jails fell by 21 per cent to 1,718 last year. This compares with 2,174 phones seized in 2009 and 2,047 in 2008.
Mountjoy Prison in Dublin again emerges as the jail with the largest number of phones seized, with 742 telephones found there last year, compared with 904 in 2009.
Despite a significant decrease in phone seizures there, the jail still accounts for 43 per cent of all of the phones seized in the entire prison system.
After Mountjoy, the next highest number of phones found in a jail last year was in the training unit, also in the Mountjoy complex, where 191 phones were found.
This was followed by: Loughan House open prison in Cavan, 155 phones; St Patrick’s Institution, 191; Limerick Prison, 133; Shelton Abbey open prison, 88; Wheatfield Prison in west Dublin, 76.
The figures were released by the Department of Justice.
The number of phone seizures in jails has begun to decline following efforts in the past two to three years to make it more difficult for any smuggled items to reach inmates.
Staff and visitors are searched in a combination of random searches and airport-style searches where people entering the jails must pass through metal detector frames.
Prison officer search teams have also been established to carry out random and intelligence-led searches in cells.
Nets have been erected over some exercise yards at Mountjoy, making it more difficult for people to throw small parcels of drugs or phones over the perimeter walls into the yards.
CONOR LALLY
