Campaign against location of €30m prison complex stepped up
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news report 
Wednesday August 31, 2005 12:02
by resident - RSMAG
info at residentsssayno dot com
Kilsallaghan, Co. Dublin
Prison Campaigners Front Page Add
The Rolestown St Margaret's Action Group (RSMAG) has placed an advertisement opposing Thornton Hall - the new home of Mountjoy Prison and the Central Mental Hospital - in the Irish Independent
RESIDENTS battling to block a new €30m jail in north Dublin yesterday took their campaign to the front page of Ireland's biggest selling daily newspaper.
The Rolestown St Margaret's Action Group (RSMAG) has placed an advertisement opposing Thornton Hall - the new home of Mountjoy Prison and the Central Mental Hospital - in the Irish Independent.
The advert calls on the Government to look at other sites and mocks the qualifying criteria applied by the Department of Justice expert committee which selected the 150-acre site.
Nessa Shevlin, spokeswoman for the protesters, said the committee had rejected the St Margaret's location but Justice Minister Michael McDowell had pushed ahead with the plan.
"Thornton Hall is totally unsuitable by the expert committee's own criteria.
"We have been trying to tell Minister McDowell and the other Cabinet members that the Government has made a huge mistake by agreeing to buy this site and by forging ahead with this plan. But they are not listening, they don't want to hear," she said.
Thornton Hall is the planned accommodation for about 1,000 inmates of Mountjoy, St Patrick's Institution, the Training Unit and the Dochas women's jail. And patients from the Central Mental Hospital will be housed in an adjoining facility.
The advertisement questions the huge cost of the site, its suitability and the selection criteria used. It also says planning permission will not be needed for the facility.
"If it goes ahead, it will result in a massive waste of taxpayers' money and will have untold consequences for our community, environment and heritage," Ms Shevlin insisted.
The deal for the land - at almost €200,000 an acre - is due to be sealed in October and Ms Shevlin claimed the Government should pull out now or risk wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayers' money.
Comments (7 of 7)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7are not immediately the types you want to sit down and plan a campaign with on prisoner issues, but....
McDowell, stands a poor chance of being minister for justice in 2008. He is about to leave future ministers and the public a whole rake of problems, ranging from equipment used by gardaí, to the singular lack of a non-garda based study on juvenile offenders, the obvious lack of a proper complaints procedure, and the beginning of "out-sourcing" and privatisation of key elements of penology.
= Get along to all the meetings.
Please - I am not trying to put in a dig against this article or the people protesting. I'm just warning everyone concerned with "one issue" that there is a portfolio of issues which together spell bad news ahead across the board. Get along to all the meetings and see who will be in the flotilla of little opinion makers.
......then they should at the very least habitable meeting basic human rights needs of prisoners and workers employed in prisons. Mountjoy has to be demolished because the conditions in the prison are appauling. Some cells have five prisoners held in them, locked up for 12 hours, no toilet (a slop bucket instead) imagine 12 hours of a small cell reeking of excrement and urine! Apart from anything else its a health hazard.
I am concerned about the groups who oppose the new prison. They dont want it to be built in their area but will be quiet happy if it goes into another - in other words NIMBYism. The prison should be built - as socialists we should be campaigning for the new prison to be devoted to the rehabilition of prisioners providing training / education opportunities - providing supports for prisoners after they finish their sentences to help them 'get back on their feet' and try to have supports that encourage them not to return.
Huh, I agree that the prison system should be about rehabilitation, but then the problem goes further than that.
Anyhow, you ought to know that this FF/PD government under the direction of McDowell at Dept of Justice have actually CUT BACK on rehabilitation programs. And there is some small prison somewhere, I can't remember the name, it's not a big place and was near the city centre, but it was kitted out for all sorts of good stuff and it is being closed. No doubt the site will be sold off to developers for apartements.
Regarding Mountjoy, why don't the government just reuse that site? Why should the families have to spend half the day visiting their relatives miles away outside Dublin. It is not only time consuming but expensive. This will lead to further break down in family relationships as both sides are further isolated, thus making the problem worse.
At least Mountjoy was relatively easy to get to for those visiting.
Also not lost is the fact that protests to prisons near city centres are much more visible than ones way way out in the countryside.
Below is some further reading on the prison system, mainly in the US, but there are interesting statistics on it, for the number of prisoners per 100,000 people. BTW Ireland's rate is around 70 to 80 per 100k and rising.
In the United States it is now a big business, and growing. Any attempt to privatise the prison system here must be resisted. If people have to be contained it should not be allowed to become just a meal ticket for investors who would have no real interest in preventing crime, just in lining their own pockets by profiting from human misery. Business by its very nature always seeks new ways of increasing itself, rather than abolishing itself.
Speaking of prisons, over on anothr thread it says McDowell might reopen Spike Island prison right beside two toxic incinerators. Its a dead cert that anyone in that prison (screws or prisoners) would be likely to become ill if they are exposed to enough of the pollution. What kind of person would delbierately plan to trap a group of people in a place like that, eh? Will we ever get to the bottom of the nastiness of Mr McDowell.
See:
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=71766
Its easy to dismiss all protesters as NIMBY's - the Government have been doing it for years. The simple fact of the matter is that Thornton Hall is a farm in a small rural community. The people of the area were not consulted and have more or less been told to like it or lump it. The Minister won't even meet with local residents. The roads around the site are small rural roads - the type where you pull over when you meet a car. Is it Nimbyism to want to protect your home and environment? Should the residents just accept a massive development that will change completely the place where they live? Also I take issue with the statement that the protesters 'would be happy to see it go anywhere else' this is most certainly not the case. The group opposing this development have consistently said that a policy to increase the prison population by 000's is wrong - regardless of where the proposed prison is.
Are the Save Tara group Nimby's, the Rossport 5? Take the time to read through the case being put by protesters before labelling them.
The group set up to oppose the prison have had several meetings with the IPRT and have made it their businees to find out about all the other relevant issues. We have been to Mountjoy to meet the Governor. The conditions are atrocious and have been for years. There are many people in there that should not be in prison. If the Government build a prison under PPP then they will be be losing money unless they fill it!! They will rent out the entire building from the PPP people so they will make it their business to ensure its always full! Please please take time to look at the issues here before calling us Nimby's. We don't want this super prison to be built anywhere! Its not in anyones interests. We are of course concerned about the effect it will have on our small rural community - who wouldn't be? We have taken the time to look at all the issues and its been an eye opener in more ways than one!
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