Cork prison overcrowding rises to new record level

Cork Prison has hit yet another overcrowding record, with 423 people in custody today, 120 of them without beds.

The prison has capacity for 304 people, after eight additional bedspaces were added earlier this year, but has been over capacity every day since 2023, with the previous record of 421 people in custody being set in February.

Mattresses on the floor of cells are utilised for prisoners without beds, with 28% of people in the prison currently not having a bed.

The prison is operating at 139% capacity, the highest of any men’s prison in the country, but the system as a whole has seen persistent overcrowding, and is currently at 124%, making inter-prison transfers to alleviate overcrowding difficult.

It comes as plans for a new build prison in Cork "remain at a very early stage", justice minister Jim O'Callaghan said recently.

The government aim to add capacity for 230 men and 100 women in a new prison on the site of the old prison, adjacent to the current one, to be built by 2031.

The former prison closed in 2016 with the opening of the new jail nearby. TDs and councillors have raised concern about the building being vacant for the last decade, saying that locals were promised when the new facility was built that the old one would be put to community use and not turned into a second prison in the locality.

Women’s prisons are regularly the most overcrowded in the country, with 312 women currently incarcerated across Mountjoy and Limerick prisons’ female units, with beds for just 202.