TWO PRISON officers and three inmates were taken to hospital after a riot involving up to 40 inmates at Mountjoy Prison in Dublin yesterday morning.
The disturbances broke out shortly after 9.30am when a number of inmates attacked the officer in charge of a section of the prison’s B-wing and attempted to drag him into a cell and take his keys.
Colleagues rushed to his aid as other inmates showered them with the contents of their chamber pots, and overturned bins and other pieces of furniture.
The violent incident was quickly brought under control and inmates were confined to their cells until the middle of the afternoon. “The other wings of the prison were not affected,” a spokesman for the Prison Service said.
The two officers were taken to the nearby Mater hospital where they were treated for minor injuries and released. The three prisoners were also brought there “as a precautionary measure” and were returned to the prison within hours.
John Clinton, general secretary of the Prison Officers Association (POA), described the incident as a “very serious disturbance” and claimed overcrowding was causing security risks.
He said the POA had recently been given assurances that the number of prisoners in Mountjoy would not climb over 570, but said that there were 643 prisoners in the jail yesterday.
“A prison officer has a demanding and challenging enough job at the best of times, but when you’re operating in a situation with overcrowded prisons, it makes it a far more difficult task,” Mr Clinton said.
He said “swift action on the part of the officers involved prevented it from turning into a much more serious incident”.
The Prison Service acknowledged there was pressure on numbers in the prison system but denied that overcrowding had been responsible for yesterday’s disturbances.
In a statement, the service said that while the stated bed capacity in Mountjoy Prison was 540, the prison was capable of accommodating well in excess of that figure without having to resort to having prisoners sleeping on mattresses on floors.
“It is only in extreme cases where this will happen, and it certainly did not happen in Mountjoy last night,” the statement said.
