The Irish Prison Service should move to abolish the practice of placing prisoners in solitary confinement and set the minimum out-of-cell time at eight hours per day, a major report by the Irish Penal Reform Trust has said. The report, Behind the Door: Solitary Confinement in the Irish Penal System, published on Friday, sets out a range of observations on the effects of solitary confinement on prisoners and sets a number of recommendations to improve the system. The study analyses the use of solitary confinement in the Republic that comes within the definition of 22 or more hours of confinement in a cell individually or sharing. The prison service intends that these prisons will offer improved regimes and more out-of-cell time for prisoners segregated from the general prison population. Others include prisoners segregated from the general prison population for reasons of “order”, some of whom are considered to be “violent and disruptive”.

Source: The Irish Times February 02, 2018 09:33 UTC