Record overcrowding at Cork Prison impacting on vital treatment services

Almost half of all inmates at Cork Prison are awaiting psychological treatment and 25% are seeking addiction treatment, but many of them will never get it because of overcrowding, which reached another new record yesterday.

Figures provided by justice minister Jim O’Callaghan in the Dáil recently show that, as of February, there were 194 Cork inmates on the prison psychology service waiting list, and 103 on the waiting list for addiction services, the latter provided by Merchants Quay Ireland.

The average number of people in custody in Cork Prison last month was 409, meaning that 25% were awaiting addiction treatment and 47% awaiting mental health treatment.

These figures are higher than the national average.

Nationally, there were 5,788 people in custody across the Irish Prison Service in February, with 920 of them on the waiting list for addiction treatment and 2,425 for mental health services, equating to 16% and 42% of the total, respectively.

With this in mind, Cork has 56% more people awaiting addiction treatment and 12% more awaiting mental health treatment than the national average.

Ongoing pressure

Mr O’Callaghan said: “Ongoing pressure on spaces in the Irish Prison Service impacts clinical waitlists in two ways. First, an increased prison population means more people are referred to each service with clinical need.

“Second, overcrowding impacts operational management of prisons, including reducing clinician access.

“As a result, unfortunately, a proportion of those referred to addiction counsellors and psychologists will be released without assessment or treatment.”

An IPS spokesperson previously told The Echo there is a huge turnover of people who receive short services, and that these inmates cannot get the benefits of treatments due to the length of waiting lists and because their sentence length means that even if they were seen immediately, they would not have enough time to properly engage with the services and develop a structured plan to suit their needs.

All-time high

It comes as overcrowding in Cork Prison hit an all-time high for the second time in a week, with 430 people in custody yesterday morning, 126 more than the prison has capacity for.

More than 29% of those incarcerated in the prison did not have a bed.

Eight additional bedspaces were added in the prison earlier this year, raising the facility’s capacity to 304 people.

But Cork Prison has been over capacity every day since 2023, with the previous record of 425 people in custody being set last Tuesday.

The number of people sleeping on mattresses has risen considerably since the start of the year, when the record number of total inmates stood at 410.

Yesterday, the prison was operating at 141% capacity, the highest of any men’s prison in the country.