The European Court of Human Rights has dismissed a discrimination claim brought by an Irish man who was disqualified from receiving a State pension while he served a prison sentence in the State. The claim was based on Article 14 of the European Convention of Human Rights and concerned the operation
Prisons
The Irish Prison Service (IPS) has been ordered to pay €55,000 to a senior official with a heart condition who was denied the right to work from home during the Covid-19 pandemic. The complainant instructed solicitors in June 2020 to lodge two complaints with the Workplace Relations Commission
The Irish Prison Service (IPS) will be placed on a full statutory footing with a non-executive board and other structures aligning with best practice under new government plans. The IPS is currently a non-statutory agency of the Department of Justice. It has approximately 3,500 staff and an annual b
Individuals released in 2019 from custodial sentences lasting between three and six months had the highest likelihood of re-offending within a year, new statistics show. Justice Minister Helen McEntee has welcomed the latest publication by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) of a statistical release
Human rights lawyer Mark Kelly has been appointed as Ireland's new inspector of prisons. Mr Kelly will replace Mark Toland, who has been fulfilling the role on an interim basis since the dramatic resignation of Patricia Gilheaney in February.
Inmates at Cork Prison gained experience of working in a live restaurant environment after an intensive eight-week culinary skills course ended with a pop-up restaurant event yesterday. The pilot programme was co-managed by the Irish Prison Service, the Department of Tourism and Hospitality and the
Northern Ireland’s Court of Appeal has dismissed a claim that a prisoner’s human rights were infringed when his housing benefit was denied for four months during his period of imprisonment. The court found that there had been no discrimination between treatment of convicted and unconvict
Northern Ireland’s Court of Appeal has delivered a judgment on the appropriate method for calculating custody expiry dates for prisoners facing concurrent sentences. The court rejected the argument that the calculation of a release date for one offence must take into consideration any period o
The Irish Prison Service has announced plans to lift a number of Covid-related restrictions from Monday. Infection control screens will be removed from physical visiting booths and physical contact between prisoners and visitors will be permitted in line with Prison Rules.
Foreign nationals and people from ethnic minority backgrounds are receiving longer prison sentences for drug offences and sexual offences than white Irish people, new research suggests. The Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT) today launched a new report on the rights, needs and experiences of foreign na
A newly-opened equine centre at Castlerea Prison will allow prisoners to develop skills in horse husbandry for employment in the equine industry after their release. The "Horses of Hope" centre, the result of an innovative partnership between the Irish Prison Service and the horse racing industry, w
Northern Ireland’s High Court has rejected claims that a prisoner was wrongly refused permission to visit his mother in hospital, and then again to attend her funeral. The court found that the decision of the health trust had been a rational one, and although there had been confusion about the
Penal experts have given a cautious welcome to new European figures showing Ireland has a relatively low prison population rate compared to other European countries. The Council of Europe's annual penal statistics, known as SPACE I, show that Ireland had a prison population rate of 74.4 per 100,000
Mark Toland, the chief inspector of the Garda Síochána Inspectorate, has been appointed as the inspector of prisons on an interim basis. Mr Toland will temporarily fill the vacancy arising from the sudden resignation of Patricia Gilheaney as inspector with effect from last week.
The Northern Ireland Prison Service has set out its plans to remove most restrictions introduced in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, including the reintroduction of in-person contact visits. The six-week "road to recovery" plan sets out what the prison service aims to have in place by Monday 4 Apr