Prisons in the Republic of Ireland


Since independence, the Republic of Ireland has enjoyed an extremely low rate of imprisonment in comparison with the rate when it was part of the United Kingdom. Recently, however, there has been considerable growth in its prison population.
Prisons in Northern Ireland are run by the Northern Ireland Prison Service.

Authority

In 1925, shortly after the establishment of the Irish Free State, the then Minister for Justice, Kevin O'Higgins, introduced legislation repealing the existing ability of grand juries to appoint visiting committees to prisons within the State. Instead, the authority to appoint the members of prison visiting committees was vested solely in the person of the Minister. Similarly, the management of the prison system within the Irish Free State passed to the control of the Minister with the dissolution by statutory instrument of the General Prisons Board for Ireland in 1928. The G.P.B. had been an all-Ireland body. Thus, by this date, both the responsibility and control over the management and oversight of the prison service within the Irish Free State was held within the Minister's department.
This situation remained unchanged until 1999 when the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, John O'Donoghue, established the Irish Prison Service to which was delegated the task of managing the day-to-day running of the prison system. Simultaneously in 1999 a Prisons Authority Interim Board was established and its members were appointed by the Minister in 2000. The purpose of this board was to advise the Director General and directors of the Irish Prison Service on the management of the penal system. In 2002 the retired High Court Judge, Dermot Kinlen, was appointed the state's first Inspector of Irish Prisons. However, none of these new bodies was ever established on a statutory basis despite indications to the contrary. Indeed, as recently as January 2011 Dermot Ahern informed the Dáil that:
In 2009 the Irish Prison Service had an annual budget of €379.319 million and it had a staff of 3,568 people.

EuroPris and the European Union

Ireland is a member of the European Union and the EuroPris system. Being a member of this system requires abolition of the death penalty and humane prison conditions. The goal of the Europris system is to ensure cooperation between European prison systems which aims to improve the lives of prisoner and their families, growing public safety and security, and reducing the re-offending rate.

Prison Services

The Irish prison system attempts to educate inmates and give them plenty of opportunities to avoid recidivism. The Irish prison system provides multiple forms of education including vocational, life skills, basic education, healthy living, and technology education. The Irish prison system also provides meth treatment facilities that covers at least 80% of the Irish prison population. They also ready the inmates for reintegration and resettlement back into society and provide adequate mental health and health services for the inmates.

Prison population rate

The prison population within the Republic of Ireland per 100,000 inhabitants is just under 94. The prison population of Ireland is 3,738. The prison rate is around seventy-eight individuals per every one hundred thousand people in the population. The proportions in the prison population are; 17.6% are pre-trial and remand prisoners, 4.2% are females, 1.0% is under the age of 18, and 13.3% of the prison population are foreign prisoners. The maximum number of prisoners the system can handle is 4,273; the prisons in Ireland are only 87.5% full. For 2017 the rates in pre-trial and female prisons both went up, the pre-trial prisoners went up to a rate of 17.6% and the female rate went up to 4.2%. The previous rates for female, 3.4% in 2015 and pre-trial prisoners was 14.6% in 2015. The remand and pre-trial rate increased by 3% and the female rate only increased by 0.8%. Since 2000 the lowest population the Irish prison system has had is 2,948 which was in 2000 and the highest rate was in 4,318 and this occurred in 2012.

Prisons and prison population

There are 12 prisons in the Republic of Ireland with a total bed capacity of 4,106 as of 31 December 2009. The daily average number of prisoners in custody in 2009 was 3,881. However, most of these prisons currently operate at or above capacity. On 25 January 2011 the prison population stood at 4,541. There were about 80 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants in October 2015, and in Northern Ireland it was 78 per 100,000 in February 2016.

Sentencing

In 2009 there were 15,425 committals to prisons within the Republic of Ireland, which is an increase of 13.8% on 2008 when the equivalent figure was 13,557. 12,339 individuals accounted for all the committals in 2009. 10,865 committals to Republic of Ireland prisons in 2009 followed sentencing.

Cost of placement

The average cost to incarcerate a person in a prison in 2009 was €77,222. This was a decrease of 16.7% on the 2008 figure when the cost of incarceration was €92,717 on average.

Active prisons

PrisonLocationYear OpenedTypeSecuritySentencedRemandAge RangeSpecial FeaturesServicing Area ofMale CapacityFemale CapacityDaily Average
Number 		Daily Average
Number
Mountjoy PrisonDublin 71850ClosedMedium18+-Dublin City65006320
Dóchas CentreDublin 71999ClosedMedium18+-National 0850110
Cork PrisonCork City1972ClosedMedium18+-Cork, Kerry, Waterford27202980
Limerick Prison.Mulgrave Street, Limerick1822ClosedMedium18+-Males: Clare, Limerick, Tipperary. Females: Munster2902029822
Castlerea PrisonCastlerea, County Roscommon1996ClosedMedium18+-Connacht, Cavan, Donegal, Longford35103060
Cloverhill PrisonCloverhill, Dublin 221999ClosedMedium18+-Leinster 43104380
Wheatfield PrisonCloverhill, Dublin 221989ClosedMedium18+-Louth, Meath, Monaghan, Wexford, Wicklow43004260
Portlaoise PrisonPortlaoise, County Laois1902ClosedHigh17+For those sentenced in the Special Criminal Court; subversive crimeNational39901190
Arbour Hill PrisonDublin 71975ClosedMedium17+Sexual offenders; long term sentencesNational14801540
Midlands PrisonPortlaoise, County Laois2000ClosedMedium17+-Carlow, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois, Offaly, Westmeath51605120
Loughan HouseCounty Cavan1973OpenLow18+-National15001290
Shelton AbbeyArklow, County Wicklow1973OpenLow19+-National1000940
One reason Ireland has a successful recidivism programme is the educational opportunities they provide while prisoners are serving a sentence. During a sentence, an inmate has access to a wide variety of classes, as well as personal tutoring services to help them succeed in their classes. These classes include home economics, art, pottery, photography, drama and music, crafts, technology, horticulture, and lastly science programs. There are also instructional technology courses available at certain facilities. If inmates do decide to attend classes, this allows them to be excused from some of the work duties that are required by the prison each day. All of this is provided through the Department of Justice and the Irish Vocational Education Committee. To decide what classes each inmate should enroll in, each inmate goes through an interviewing process. This helps the inmates because it gives them a personalized schedule that they would not be able to make on their own. Also, students are interviewed on a weekly basis to see if they are struggling in any classes. This allows the program to be more successful because if an inmate is having any trouble in their classes it is to be assessed right away so they can get the help they need to get back on track.

Minors

Formerly, children in Ireland were detained in Industrial Schools or Reformatory Schools. Currently, within the Republic of Ireland, they are detained in institutions called Children Detention Schools. These detention schools are managed by the Irish Youth Justice Service. There are four facilities for the detention of "children", defined as boys under the age of 17 and girls under the age of 18: