Jesuit Centre responds to the comments yesterday of Dermot Ahern TD

News Release

Jesuit Centre responds to the comments yesterday of Dermot Ahern TD, Minister for Justice and Law Reform, that: "It's a bit much for people to be saying that prisoners should have a cell of their own. This is prison after all"

Inadequate prison conditions now official government policy?

Responding to Minister Ahern’s comment on Tuesday that: "It's a bit much for people to be saying that prisoners should have a cell of their own. This is prison after all", the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice has said that the Minister’s statement reveals a worrying lack of any real commitment to develop a modern, humane, and rehabilitative prison system in this country. The Centre said that the Minister’s approach contravenes the Department of Justice’s own stated policy goal of having single cell occupancy at Thornton Hall, and ignores the European Prison Rules, which clearly recognise the desirability of single cell occupancy. This retrograde approach has been adopted even though the Irish Prison Service made an explicit commitment to develop Thornton Hall in compliance with the European Prison Rules.

Eoin Carroll, Acting Director of the Jesuit Centre, said:  “The Minister has rolled back on progressive policy principles; his determination to go ahead with a prison that is far larger than many experts on penal policy agree is desirable represents an approach tending towards the warehousing of prisoners.” Carroll went on to say: “The Irish Prison Service claimed that Thornton Hall, Ireland’s first ‘super prison’,  would address the appalling conditions, including serious overcrowding, existing in Mountjoy Prison and that it would provide for a rehabilitative regime.  Just how will the promised rehabilitative regime be achieved, given the sheer size of the prison and the apparent abandonment of any commitment to single cell occupancy?” He added: “While there is a commitment to providing in-cell sanitation in Thornton Hall, this cannot ensure respect for an individual prisoner’s privacy if there is to be someone else in the same cell.”

Carroll went on to say:  “The collapse of the original Thornton Hall project should have been regarded as offering the opportunity for a radical rethink of the proposed approach to prison development in this country. Internationally agreed principles and standards in relation to prison, and the example of the more enlightened countries, show clearly that we should be adopting a very different approach to that now favoured by the Minister and the Irish Prison Service. We need an approach that would favour the development of smaller prisons, use open prisons as far as possible, provide regimes that are strongly committed to rehabilitation and to addressing the serious drug problems that are at the root of so much crime, from the petty to the most serious, in this country.”

Fr Peter McVerry SJ, of the Jesuit Centre, who regularly visits Dublin prisons, including Mountjoy, commented: “Thornton Hall is a misguided project, which should now be abandoned. The 250 million euro capital budget for prison building programmes over the coming few years would be far better used in tackling drug addiction and the establishment of a custodial drug treatment facility. Legislative provision allowing for such facilities was included in the Misuse of Drugs Act, 1976, but more than thirty years later has never been acted on.”

[ends]

For further information please contact:

Eoin Carroll, 087 225 0793; 01 855 6814 (office)

Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice