Madam, - It truly beggars belief to see the Irish Penal Reform Trust calling for clean syringes to be distributed to prison inmates.
Is it only in Ireland, where the upholding of convicts' human rights seems the be a principal goal of such do-gooders, that inmates can continue with recreational drug use when they are supposedly being punished for crimes against society? What makes it even more ironic is that it may have been drug use - or an action resulting from it - that resulted in their imprisonment in the first place.
Where is the "reform" in actively facilitating, if not encouraging, continued use of drugs? It astounds me that the logical act of physically separating prisoners from visitors, thus stemming the tide of drugs flowing into the prisons, has not been adopted in Ireland.
This simple action could be the first step in genuinely reforming Irish prisons, making them places of both physical and mental rehabilitation instead of drug-washed schools of crime. - Yours, etc.,
GERARD REYNOLDS, Ballycullen Road, Dublin 16.