CALL FOR REVIEW OF DRUGS IN PRISON

The dispensing and control of drugs in prison should be urgently
reviewed, a report on prison deaths has recommended.

The National Steering Group on Deaths in Prison has called for
additional pharmacists to be appointed in prisons to oversee the
control and dispensing of drugs "as a matter of urgency". It also
calls for more qualified nurses to be employed in the prison service.

The steering group reported that 56 per cent of deaths in custody
between 1990 and 1997 were suicides; 27 per cent of deaths were due to
a drug overdose or prisoners choking on their own vomit and some 17
per cent were due to natural causes.

There was a "noticeable increase in recent years" in both the numbers
of deaths due to natural causes and drug overdoses, which reflected
both the increase in the numbers of older people committed to prison,
"particularly for sex offences", and "the large number of prisoners
with a background of current or recent opiate abuse".

The group was satisfied there was a "much more active policy in
operation to prevent prison deaths in custody" than there was at the
beginning of the decade. "Staff saved a considerable number of lives
by a combination of good observations and fast reactions when finding
a self-injury in progress. These events - unlike a death in custody -
rarely if ever attract media attention."

The group also reported that the prison population had "increased
dramatically" and passed through the system more quickly, making it
more difficult for prison staff to develop a quality relationship with
those most at risk of suicide. A high-support facility was called for
in each closed institution for offenders exhibiting suicidal
tendencies and a "special unit to cater for psychiatrically disturbed
violent prisoners".

The group was concerned at the amount of time prisoners received with
medical officers. "In some institutions, the number of offenders who
attended some of the medical officers in the timespan in which the
medical officers were in the institution would indicate that each
offender received approximately one minute of the medical officer's
examination time." It also recommended that the sentence review group
"should consider the cases of offenders at an earlier stage in their
sentence than the present seven years".

The group suggested that the option of a shared occupancy cell be
available to both offenders and management and that portable TVs be
installed in some cells in selected prisons as part of a pilot
project. This might address "the boredom and loneliness factors in
being locked up in a single cell for 14 hours a day".

The Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, welcomed the recommendations
and said he hoped "in conjunction with the group to be in a position
to follow up on them as soon as possible".

A departmental statement acknowledged that overcrowding in prisons was
hindering progress in the development of drug-free areas. It said the
situation would improve when the new remand prison at Cloverhill, the
new midlands prison and the women's prison in Mountjoy were completed.