Andrew Carey
LIMERICK’s prison officers, together with their colleagues in the 10 other closed facilities and the three open and semi-open centres around the country, have been praised and honoured for the work they do in helping to rehabilitate offenders while in custody after Minister for Justice, Ms Frances Fitzgerald outlined that prison allows criminals to “address the causes of their offending behaviour”.
The Limerick Minister made her comments at the launch of new set of stamps to mark the work of the prison service in Ireland.
With more than 3,400 staff working throughout the system in Ireland, several hundred varied professional personnel are attached to the 250 prisoners at the Mulgrave St facility.
Launching the four-stamp collection, the Minister said that the collection is a worthy recognition of the work done by the staff of the prison service.
On average, there are more than 4,000 prisoners in custody at any one time throughout the 14 institutions.
“While prison is meant to be a punitive through the deprivation of liberty, more importantly it provides an opportunity for a person who may have been marginalised by society, missed out on education or caught in a spiral of addiction and criminal activity to address the causes of their offending behaviour. It is the responsibility of the Irish Prison Service, its staff, its partners, both statutory and non-statutory, to provide those opportunities through the provision of services such as education, work training, healthcare services and drug treatment among others,” added Minister Fitzgerald.
Irish Prison Service director general Michael Donnellan said the stamp collection honours every member of staff of the service.
“It highlights that the Irish Prison Service is not simply a collection of institutions made up of high walls and secure doors but is made up of the men and women of the service who work each day behind those walls and doors for the State,” he said.
