DRUG ADDICTS USING PRISON AS REFUGE

THE Governor of Mountjoy Prison in Dublin says that a young woman who asked
to be allowed stay in prison so that she could continue fighting her drug
addiction rather than be given early release, is not unusual.

Tara O'Callaghan, a 24-year-old heroin addict from Fatima Mansions, Dublin,
who had pleaded guilty three years ago to possessing a syringe during the
attempted robbery of a Spar shop in Dublin's Dame St, appeared in court
last week pleading to be left to serve her full sentence in Mountjoy
without further review.

Tara is managing to stay drug-free in prison but does not feel she could do
so back in the community. It has been recommended that Tara be transferred
to a residential treatment facility once a place becomes available.

John Lonergan, the Governor of Mountjoy Prison, says: “On any one day we'd
have five or six prisoners who'd decline early release. These are people
serving short-term sentences who are using prison to get some sort of
stability back into their lives.

“They say to me, ‘I'd prefer to stay in and get my head in order.' In many
ways the prison is being used as a refuge by these women.”

Women in prison, he says, are mostly semi-homeless and extremely
vulnerable. They wander around the streets being used as small-time drug
carriers by men. The offences they are imprisoned for are generally petty
but they will have a long history of these petty offences.

Many of them will have notched up 15 or 20 custodial sentences over the
last few years. They go from the streets to prison, back to the streets and
then into prison again. While vulnerable to abuse by men, they do not tend
to enjoy the protection of the law. Many of them, heroin addicts as young
as 17 or 18, will have children who are either in care or being cared for
by family members.

The prison authorities estimate that about 100 such women, all known to
them, have died over the last couple of years from overdoses, hypothermia,
Aids or other malaises related to addiction. This is a huge percentage of
the four or five hundred women who pass through Mountjoy each year.

As Lonergan says, prison can offer them some basic care food, shelter,
sleep. But ultimately, like Tara, they all have to go back on the street
sometime.