Staff in ‘distress’ over plight of chronically mentally ill prisoners in jails

Prison staff were left “distressed” at the plight of men with psychotic disorders committed to prisons, where the treatment they needed was not available to them, according to a new report on Mountjoy Prison.
Serious concerns have also been expressed about the number of women remanded in custody in the Dóchas Centre prison, also on Dublin’s Mountjoy campus, but who are never sentenced to a term of imprisonment when their case eventually came before the courts.
The Dóchas Centre visiting committee report said it was time the “continual flow of women in need of residential psychiatric treatment” into the prison ended. Female prisoners with serious mental health issues were “currently detained in inappropriate conditions”.
Furthermore, about 40 per cent of women in the prison at any one time were on remand. They had been imprisoned pending their trials despite the fact “most pose little danger to society”. Their presence in the prison was exacerbating overcrowding amid “an alarming and steady increase” in the number of women being jailed.
The just published Dóchas Centre visiting committee report notes that at the end of 2022 there were 158 women in the jail, almost twice the number – 85 – it was designed for and even above the revised bed capacity of 146 put in place in 2019. That number, according to the Irish Prison Service, has increased this week to 181 and should be 243, but for 62 prisoners being granted temporary release.
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The Mountjoy Prison visiting committee noted “the prevalence of mental health issues among all prisons is estimated at 3.6 per cent for psychotic disorders” and was at 51 per cent for “substance usage disorder”.
“Staff on occasion have expressed concern and disappointment, at times distress, about the suffering endured by men who have been diagnosed with a psychotic illness left without recommended treatment,” the committee said.
More generally, though single cell occupancy had been introduced in 2010 and had provided “dignity” for prisoners, overcrowding had returned resulting in “a leap backwards”. Currently there are 843 men in Mountjoy Prison, which has a bed capacity of 755.
The visiting committee said the overcrowding had resulted in “prisoners doubling up in cells, prisoners sleeping on mattresses on the floor”.
In reply to queries, the Irish Prison Service said mental health services within prisons were provided by it working in partnership with the HSE-National Forensic Mental Health Service. There was “a range of rehabilitative, therapeutic and counselling services available for people in custody”. On the issue of overcrowding, the prison service said as well as delivering 1,100 new prison spaces, a new working group on future prison capacity would “consider what quantity and type of prison accommodation is needed into the future”.