WITH LIMERICK women’s prison operating at 150 per cent capacity last week, Senator Aubrey McCarthy called for urgent reform of Ireland’s women’s prisons, warning that severe overcrowding is creating unsafe, degrading conditions and failing vulnerable women.
Mountjoy Dóchas Centre was at 123 per cent capacity last week. “These are not just statistics,” Senator McCarthy said in the Seanad.
“They are women sleeping on floors, traumatised by overcrowding, and released into homelessness. I meet them in our homeless cafés after release. This breaches the dignity we are bound to uphold under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the UN Bangkok Rules.”
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