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PB May-June 2023 May-June 2023 17
prisoners docile, but an abuse awaiting an
enormous legal action. It also militates against
the most important function of prison,
rehabilitation, always neglected.
One rare bright spot is that thankfully the age-
old travesty of slopping out is obligatory for just
30 prisoners now, down from around 1,000 in
2011.
This article argues there is a problem of
competence in the prison service. John Farrell is
a former governor of Portlaoise and one of the
most experienced governors with over 30 years
experience. He started as a prison ocer and has
worked his way up to now being Governor of
Operations for the prison service. Many speculate
that he will be the future Director General of the
Irish Prison Service. Should that happen, he will
be the first prison ocer to attain the position, as
previously it has been the preserve of career civil
servants who have never worked face to face with
hardened criminals. In the circumstances this
may be no harm.
Farrell was thrust into the limelight recently
when an internal email he sent to all sta made
its way into a Business Post article by journalist
Michael Brennan. His scathing letter highlighted
grave deficits in on-the-job vocational
training given to prison ocers.
Malpractice in our prisons, outlined by
Farrell, included writing security-key
reference-numbers on the locks they open
and coding keys with coloured tape
corresponding to the colour on the
security gate. Dangerously, this could
hasten prisoners’ escapes should they
manage to obtain keys by force or guile.
Prisoners are also being offered
‘compassionate’ calls from prison landing
oces, bypassing the checks in place to
protect victims and to prevent prisoners
from making unauthorised contact with
individuals not on their approved list of contacts.
It is clear that officers meant well but it
undermined security protocols and indeed
common sense.
Retired and senior ocers were horrified by the
incompetencies evidenced by prospective front-
line managers and of course also that this
information made its way into the public domain
from what are supposed to be private interviews
protected by GDPR and — more seriously — the
Ocial Secrets Act.
One senior ocer with more than 30 years’
service explained to Village that “back when we
were rookies we learned from senior ocers
whom we shadowed. We were given a bollocking
if we fecked up or were fined and reprimanded if
we mislaid keys or breached security protocols.
Senior wardens took us under their wing, the first
lesson being how to say ‘no’ to a prisoner”. The
same source reported delinquency in Portlaoise
which he claims is ineptly headed, where one
prisoner occupies the entire ground floor and the
entire E Block houses only eight — Dissident IRA
— prisoners.
More systematically, problems were
highlighted by another Irish Prison Service
whistleblower in 2018 who claimed the
Performance Management Development System
(PMDS) which the prison service had been
obliged to introduce in 2008 was all but
abandoned and thousands of performance
ratings were falsified by lazy and incompetent
Governors. This was confirmed by the Department
of Justice’s Internal Audit Unit. Sta were left to
stagnate after basic training. Professional
development consists of a day of notional box-
ticking exercises every three years. The
whistleblower also alleged bullying, nepotism,
harassment, spurious complaints and maliciously
thwarted promotions in the prison service.
PMDS was recently rebooted after a 14-year
suspension. Tellingly, the current Director
General, Caron McCaffrey, was previously
director of Human Resources with overall
responsibility for PMDS and sta development.
Sources who spoke to Village agreed that
without swift action the prison service will
generate headlines for mistreatments of
prisoners and prison ocers and for dangerous
lapses of security. One described our prisons as
a tinderbox.
A
round 4,416 people are serving time
in one of Ireland’s 12 prisons, but
only 4,411 beds are available. So, for
example, Limerick’s female prison is
operating at 164%. The prison
population has increased dramatically from a
base of only 750 people in 1970. As to its
composition, 4.2% of the prison population is
female and about 14% non-national. In 2021, the
average cost of an “available, staed prison
space” was €80,335 but €270,000 in high-
security Portlaoise.
Recent media coverage has shown that
however dysfunctional the Garda, our armed
forces are far worse. So what are misbehaviour
levels in the unsung prison service, that for
obvious reasons is largely out of mind for the
ruling classes, and has notably not been the
subject of inquiries in recent decades?
The Irish Penal Reform Trust, a charity,
considers that priorities include overcrowding,
lack of access to adequate mental healthcare, the
failure to publish reports relating to the Dóchas
Centre, the overrepresentation of Travellers in the
penal system and the need to expedite the Bill
which purports to implement a Protocol to the UN
Convention Against Torture. A recent stringent
analysis, ‘Unlocked: An Irish Prison Ocer’s
Story’ by former prison-ocer whistleblower
David McDonald, co-written with journalist
Michael Cliord, paints a depressing picture of a
brutal and under-resourced system – a cocktail
of boredom, stress and occasional violence.
A scandalous human-rights breaching practice
in most Irish prisons is the eective indulgence
of cultures of drug-taking, deemed to keep
This article argues there is a problem
of competence in the prison service:
performance management was abandoned
and there are allegations of bullying,
nepotism, harassment, spurious complaints
and maliciously thwarted promotions
The prison service is as dysfunctional as
the Garda and military, it’s just that fewer
influential people care
By Michael Smith
POLITICS
PRISON DISSERVICE
Portloise: ground floor houses just one, difficult
dissident, prisoner
