Head of Irish Prison Service defends surge in number of prisoners being released early
A doubling in the number of prisoners being released early, leading to allegations of a 'revolving door' system, has been defended by the head of the
Irish Prison Service
.
Caron McCaffrey, the director general of the service, said the early releases were done in a controlled manner, with supports in place for those set free early.
The number of prisoners currently on so-called temporary release – meaning they have been freed early and are not obliged to return to jail – is 595. That is double the rate of March, 2023, when the criteria for temporary release was relaxed as overcrowding worsened.
Ms McCaffrey defended the increase, saying prisoner numbers would be much higher – more than the 5,300 at present – if the prison service did not have the power to grant early release. There is a 'finite' number of beds, in an already overcrowded prison system, and prisoners serving short sentences were at times released early to make way for new committals.
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Plans to create 1,100 new prison spaces on existing prison campuses by 2030 would also help to alleviate overcrowding, she said. Most of those schemes had commenced through the planning or tendering processes, though Ms McCaffrey cautioned creating new prison spaces is very expensive.
'Our current annual cost per prison space is €100,000,' Ms McCaffrey said, speaking at the Prison Officers' Association (POA) annual conference in
Galway city
. 'And building prisons is extremely expensive. In relation to the extra 1,100 places, you're talking close to half a billion euro in terms of construction at today's costs.'
Ms McCaffrey said she saw the 'benefits' of electronic tagging of prisoners if it were used as an alternative to remanding suspects in custody, after they are charged with crimes, pending their cases reaching the
courts
.
'The remand population has doubled in the last five years, we've almost 1,000 people on remand,' Ms McCaffrey said. 'And in certain circumstances we are releasing certain [sentenced] people to make way for the remand population because there's no potential for us to release anyone who is on remand.'
She welcomed that Minister for Justice
Jim O'Callaghan
was now considering tagging as an alternative to remanding in custody, saying it was in place in other countries and would offer 'some respite' to the Irish prison system. Anyone in the community on a tag could be banned from specific places and may be subject to a curfew, all of which could be monitored. However, any intervention made by gardaí in cases of noncompliance would 'not necessarily be in real time'.
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Irish prisons at risk of 'tragic event' if overcrowding not fixed, warn prison officers
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The Irish Prison Service from 2014 had a contract in place with security company Chubb to run a tagging system to monitor prisoners on controlled early release programmes. Small numbers of prisoners were tagged and, because of the modest scale, the cost per prison was prohibitive and the system was discontinued after about five years.
The POA has strongly criticised the Irish Prison Service over what it says is its slow response to drones being used to deliver drugs, mobile phones and knives to prisoners. Ms McCaffrey said significant work had been undertaken, including the installation of metal nets to prevent rope nets being burned by contraband being dropped from drones, having been first set on fire.
'We've installed metal nets over the exercise yards in
Portlaoise
, in the A block, and its been extremely successful and we've done it in the D yard in
Mountjoy
,' Ms McCaffrey said of the section of the Dublin jail with criminals aligned to the
Kinahan cartel
are held.
She added that since the new metal nets were installed in Mountjoy's D yard 'there hasn't been a single drone, so it's been incredibly successful'.
The
Garda
and Irish Prison Service had, last Monday, also signed a memorandum of understanding around tackling crime, including drug smuggling, across the prison system. This included sharing intelligence about criminal gangs, preserving evidence of a crime being committed and disrupting drug smuggling into jails.
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