Wednesday, Mar 10th 2010
The Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT) welcomes the Cabinet decision to increase the use of Community Service Orders. This follows recommendations made by the Probation Service to greatly extend the number of community service places; it also answers consistent calls from IPRT for a greater use of community sanctions in dealing with less serious offences.
Against [...]
4,132 IN PRISON CUSTODY IN IRELAND
The number of prisoners in custody in Irish prisons was 4,132 on Monday 1st Feb, 2010. This is an increase of 11% on the numbers of custody the same week in 2009. (These figures do not include those out on temporary release.) This acceleration in prison population growth, in an [...]
The Irish Penal Reform Trust will publish a new report: Detention of Children in Ireland: International Standards and Best Practice. The report, which will be launched Monday 30th November in Dublin, considers the implementation of international human rights standards to children detention in Ireland, and details best practice examples from Ireland and other European jurisdictions.
The [...]
Incontrovertible and devastating evidence of chronic conditions in the largest prison in the State has been released in the Report of an Inspection of Mountjoy Prison by the Inspector of Prisons, which had been published today. The report details the appalling treatment of prisoners in Mountjoy Prison. These are core human rights issues, and the [...]
Responses to the IPS Report and the Increases in the Irish Prison Population
Ian O’Donnell, Professor of Criminology at UCD is responding to the Irish Prison Services report which among other things points to the increasing numbers of those who have been imprisoned for non-payment of court ordered fines. Although the amount of time these people [...]
‘Shell snaps its fingers and the State hops to it’ | Maura Harrington
In Bellmullet court on Thursday, five Shell to Sea protesters were up for hearings on charges ranging from last August 2008 to this June 2009. Judge Anderson dismissed several charges on technical points but was very harsh in serving two of the campaigners [...]
Eoin O’Dell | Blasphemy Provisions Should be Referred to the Supreme Court
Eoin O’Dell, TCD law lecturer and blogger, who comments regularly on defamation, argues that the Council of State, which convenes tonight to advise the President whether to refer the Defamation Bill, 2006 and the Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill, 2009 to the Supreme [...]
This post was written and published on the 12th June last on the Irish Penal Reform Trust Director’s blog. It is being republished here with the kind permission of IPRT.
In response to a number of serious incidents at Mountjoy this week, IPRT was asked to make public comment on a number of radio programmes. [...]
So the government has dumped Bernard McNamara and the Leargas consortium because they were no longer affordable just as Bernard McNamara dumped the government when it appeared that the Regeneration Projects wouldn’t be the cash cow that McNamara had planned. In both cases the recent increase in the cost of financing the projects were cited. [...]
The public reaction of profound sympathy and outrage at the killing of Shane Geoghegan, by a killer or killers involved in a bloody feud between drug-dealing gangs in Limerick, is totally justified. Shane Geoghegan was an innocent bystander mistaken for the true target - a member of one of the rival Limerick drug gangs. Shane [...]