The Governor of the Dóchas centre, the main female prison in the state has resigned because of the “serious undermining” of her position and an “overall lack of respect by senior personnel in the Irish Prison Service”. The first hand evidence given by Ms McMahon of the degree of overcrowding and its effects on rehabilitative(…)
About Mary Rogan
Posts by Mary Rogan:
Progress on ending imprisonment for fine-defaulting
The Fines Bill has been passed by the Dáil and is now before the Seanad. I wrote about the provisions of the Bill here. As this piece in the Irish Times argues, it is to be hoped that the judiciary implement the finalised Act in full. District Court sentencing is something about which we know rather little, but(…)
Why more prisons won't work: a change of heart in the UK
An excellent article in the Guardian by Juliet Lyons of the Prison Reform Trust in the UK reflects on the important new report from the House of Commons Select Committee on Justice entitled Cutting Crime: the case for Justice Re-investment. That report makes sensible, yet brave, recommendations for the future of UK penal policy. In(…)
CPT to re-visit Ireland
It is good to read that the Council of Europe’s Committee on the Prevention of Torture (CPT) has placed Ireland on a list of countries which it intends to inspect in 2010. The last visit of the CPT was in 2006 and before that the Committee visited in 2002. On its last visit, the CPT(…)
Fine defaulters and Irish Prison Policy
In the Irish Times yesterday, Conor Lally informs us that the number of people jailed for not paying fines is likely to double this year, bringing the numbers of committals for non payment of fines up to one quarter of all committals to prison. 2,520 people were committed to jail for non payment of a fine(…)
Liam Herrick, Irish Penal Reform Trust to speak at DIT, November 10th
Liam Herrick, Executive Director, Irish Penal Reform Trust to speak at DIT. As part of DIT’s School of Social Sciences and Law’s Socio-Legal Speaker Series, Liam Herrick, Executive Director of the Irish Penal Reform Trust will discuss current challenges facing the Irish prison system on Tuesday, November 10 in Room 304, DIT Mountjoy Square at(…)
Ending Imprisonment for debt is only the first step in reshaping our prison policy
The Law Reform Commission’s Consultation Paper on Personal Debt Management and Debt Enforcement, published recently, provisionally recommended that imprisonment should not be an option for debt recovery. The Commission’s position, based on a thorough assessment of current Irish and international practice, is a sensible and welcome one. While there are many sound reasons against using(…)
Penal-welfarism in Ireland
This year’s European Society of Criminology Conference was held in the beautiful city of Ljubljana, Slovenia. I spoke there in a session with Anton Symkoviych who spoke about power relations in a Ukranian prison and Dr. Anja Dirkzwager who, along with her colleague Prof Candace Kruttschnitt, told us about their re-examination of the classic Contrasts(…)