Claims of ‘inhuman conditions’ in Portlaoise Prison

December 1984

CLAIMS the prisoners are beaten and descriptions of strip searches in Portlaoise Prison were outlined at a meeting in Bray recently.

Nicky Kelly, himself only recently released, gave a vivid account to the meeting of the special sub-committee of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union which was set up earlier this year. Mr Kelly told the meeting the prisoners were forcibly stripped and the most intimate parts of their bodies were probed, and prisoners were beatn if they resisted this. He accused both the prison administrators and the Department of Justice of attempting to break the morale of the prisoners through a continual campaign of harassment. He condemned the visiting committee who were doctors and clergy, who refused to speak out.

Other speakers included Michael O’Muirrithe, also recently released from Portlaoise, and MArie Gavigan who spent six years in Armagh Jail and described conditions there. The mother of a prisoner in Portlaoise echoed what the speakers had said about the visiting conditions which she described as inhuman.

A mock-up of a visiting cage was on display and it was demonstrated how not only physical contact between husbands and wives or fathers and children was forbidden, but by the nature of the screen, extending from floor to ceiling, it was impossible for prisoner and visitor to see each other clearly.

The meeting was chaired by John McCormack of the ITGWU and concluded with a call for an end to strip searching and the introduction of open visits.

It was noted that though invited, no councillors from Bray UDC saw fit to attend.