DRUG SEIZURES RISE 143% IN MOUNTJOY
Increase blamed on re-opened yard in jail 339 139
Figures from the Irish Prison Service reveal that there were 339 seizures of drugs in tablet or powder form in Mountjoy male jail up to the end of October – compared to 139 seizures for the whole of 2016.
It is believed the re-opening of the exercise yard in the renovated D-wing along with increased flow of drugs into the prison accounts for the soaring seizures.
Mountjoy has surpassed Wheatfield jail as the No. 1 prison in the country for drug smuggling with the Clondalkin facility reporting 150 seizures this year.
Arbour Hill consistently has a zero rate of drug trafficking into the prison for the past three years while Shelton Abbey only has a handful of drugs seized each year. Deputy General Secretary of the
Jim Mitchell Prison Officers’ Association Jim Mitchell said the surge in seizures may be partly due to the exercise yard re-opening.
He aded: “There are more drugs being thrown into the prison which hadn’t been the case for around a year and a half or two years while the yard was decommissioned. It is very, very
How killer Joe O’reilly might look in his chef’s whites either getting through the net or someone is shimmying up the wall or whatever.
“Then it’s, ‘where are the drugs gone?’ because it’s a crowd of over 100 of them and then you go in and target the cells afterwards.”
The open visits for prisoners and their families in certain parts of Mountjoy are also thought to be contributing to the rising drug seizures.
The figures show Dochas, Mountjoy’s female wing, has just 13 seizures in the past year.
The Midlands prison is also a hotspot for drugs with 111 seizure this year, while Limerick prison had 75 seizures, with the new Cork prison only logging 17 finds of illegal drugs.
Any suspected drug seizure is passed on to the gardai for examination and possible prosecution.
The amount of drugs seizures in the jail up to end of October The amount of drugs seizures for the whole of 2016 at the jail