Irish prisoners to be tagged on temporary release

Run_to_da_hills

Looks like this will be a short term solution for many of our prisons that are bursting at the seems.

"The Director of the Prison Service says up to 20 inmates will be electronically tagged on temporary release as part of a new pilot programme due to begin in June.

Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern announced the introduction of the new satellite tracking pilot programme at the Prison Officers' Association annual conference in Killarney"

On the plus side this would save the exchequer heaps on officers fees but the down side would be that some prisoners could wrap some signal blocking foil around their feet and dissapear into the wilderness and carry out their evil deeds again.

I just hope that this is not applied to serial rapists and other repeat offenders. We already learned a few lessons in the past with early releases. In the UK it has been reported than tagged prisoners have committed up to 1400 crimes.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0430/prison.html

Kasabian

Radical thought. Keep them in prison.

racso1975

Have ya heard of one of the first proposed candidates?

A man who in 1975 raped and killed two women and has been in prision since. In early 2008 he got sick and went into a coma and continues to be today. This man is considered such high risk that we spend 900k a year to have 6 guards watch him 24/7!!!!!!!!:rolleyes:

WTF!!! He's hardly gonna come out of a coma after nearly 3 years and tear it out of the hospital!!

Such a fluckin waste of money!!!!!

Minstrel27

racso1975 wrote: »

Have ya heard of one of the first proposed candidates?

A man who in 1975 raped and killed two women and has been in prision since. In early 2008 he got sick and went into a coma and continues to be today. This man is considered such high risk that we spend 900k a year to have 6 guards watch him 24/7!!!!!!!!:rolleyes:

WTF!!! He's hardly gonna come out of a coma after nearly 3 years and tear it out of the hospital!!

Such a fluckin waste of money!!!!!

Surely they will be saving money by putting a tag on him?

funnyname

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0430/prison.html

The Director of the Prison Service says up to 20 inmates will be electronically tagged on temporary release as part of a new pilot programme due to begin in June.

Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern announced the introduction of the new satellite tracking pilot programme at the Prison Officers' Association annual conference in Killarney.

Brian Purcell said these would be low-risk prisoners from all over the country.

One of them is likely to be the convicted murderer and rapist Geoffrey Evans, who is in jail for life for raping and killing two young women in Wicklow and Galway in 1975.

Evans has been in a coma in the Mater Hospital since December 2008.

Mr Purcell said tagging him would allow the Irish Prison Service to assess the effects on high-tech medical equipment in a hospital environment.

He said it would also save the €900,000 a year it costs to keep six prisoner officers guarding him 24 hours every day.

The Minister for Justice said he did not think there were moral or ethical issues involved and that Evans would benefit from not been subjected to the indignity of having prison officers with him all the time.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

lonad wrote: »

Radical thought. Keep them in prison.

You seem to have misunderstood the problem. See below.

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

Looks like this will be a short term solution for many of our prisons that are bursting at the seems.

If they're realeasing the people in there for lesser crimes in order to make space for rapists and murderers then I'm all for it.

funnyname

Then I did a search to find out more about this prisoner and found this, beggars belief

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/if-theres-an-argument-for-capital-punishment-then-these-murderous-buffoons-make-it-well-1592841.html

f you want to know the insanity which sometimes guides the affairs of this State, step forward Geoffrey Evans (though in the hope that he dies soon). Evans is in a coma after having had a heart by-pass operation in the Mater Hospital. And the great three-letter word now follows. W-H-Y?

Evans is a monster. He and his partner John Shaw came to Ireland in 1974, thinking that it would be easy to abduct, rape and murder young women here. They were already serial sex-offenders in Britain. They began their Irish career with a burglary that went wrong. The two men were arrested and convicted, and their fingerprints were sent to Manchester, where they were matched with fingerprints found at the scene of three sex attacks.

But rather than extradite Evans and Shaw to Britain, the Irish courts sought more "evidence" and let the men out on bail.

Shaw already had 26 convictions. Evans was a hardened criminal. Yet our courts allowed them to go free. The context of this may be explained with another three letters: I-R-A. Our courts, and our political establishment, would go to almost any lengths to avoid sending IRA terrorists to Britain for trial -- both in the mid-1970s, and even 20 years on, at the end of the Troubles. So whatever caused the IRA to abandon its campaign, it was not undue pressure from this Republic. Indeed, the very reason why the government of the day did not seek the extradition of the Dublin and Monaghan bombers of 1974 (whose names were known to the gardai) was the precedent it might set for our patriot freedom fighters.

Shaw and Evans went on a spree. At Brittas Bay, in Wicklow, they abducted Elizabeth Plunkett (23) and savagely beat and raped her for many hours. They then killed her. It almost passes belief that after they were found trying to burn the poor girl's clothing, and were questioned by gardai, they were again allowed to go free.

Their next victim was Mary Duffy, who was abducted outside Castlebar. She was hit so hard that her dental fillings were knocked from her teeth. She was tied to a tree and raped repeatedly for some 36 hours. She was then, like Elizabeth Plunkett, strangled.

At length, these two murderous buffoons -- they had "disguised" their car in the course of their peregrinations by crudely hand-painting it -- were caught by gardai at Salthill. In due course, they were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Now, if there is an argument for capital punishment, these two men make it perfectly. They set about the serial rape and murder of young women, choosing Ireland as their theatre of operations because they believed (with good reason, as a later serial killer was to show) that the institutions of the State would be slow to respond. Their ineptitude does not diminish their evil. I cannot see any reason why they should not have been killed; but then, I cannot see any reason why they should not have been extradited in the first place.

Had this State lived up to its obligations as a civilised member of the comity of nations, they would have been in jail in Manchester at the very time when they were instead murdering these poor Irish girls.

However, this story now gets truly bizarre. Because last month, while still a prisoner, Shaw was given a heart by-pass operation in the Mater, a Dublin hospital which routinely has nearly a thousand people on its waiting lists. Possible cancer sufferers must wait nine months for a colonoscopy there. Yet this State nonetheless performed a life-saving operation on a sadistic rapist and murderer, in order to prolong his life in prison, at the expense of the taxpayer? (I do hope he didn't have to wait too long).

Which makes what follows seem almost reasonable. Shortly before Evans' operation, Peter Duff, a convicted heroin dealer from Ballyfermot, sued the State for injuries incurred while serving three years in Wheatfield Prison. Prison warder brutality? Garda violence? Assaults by fellow-inmates? Not quite. This fine fellow suffered abrasions after falling from a lavatory seat on which he was standing, while removing some toilet paper from a vent, into which he had earlier, and illicitly, stuffed it. Moved to another cell, he later illicitly sneaked into his old cell to take illicit photographs of the toilet, illicitly using an illicit camera. He presented these pictures as evidence, claiming €38,000 damages.

Judge Peter Matthews found against his claim, though concluding his summary of the evidence with the observation that the litigant had come a cropper on the crapper. (Hilarious, me lud. Give me air. Me ribs is cracking). But the judge then made no order for costs, thereby implicitly awarding the costs against the State. Yes, us, AGAIN. We, the hapless dolts who were paying to keep this fine fellow in jail in the first place, had then to pay to defend ourselves against his ridiculous legal suit resulting from his various illicit deeds. just as we are paying for the by-pass for Evans. Maybe we'll be giving the poor dear a heart transplant next, or perhaps a little trip to Lourdes.

No doubt, there's logic somewhere in all this: but lawyers' logic only.

racso1975

Minstrel27 wrote: »

Surely they will be saving money by putting a tag on him?

Completely agree with but my arguement is waht were they doing spending a million a year on guarding a person in a coma!!! surely a pair a of handcuffs to the bed or restraints would have also done the job

Dravokivich

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

Looks like this will be a short term solution for many of our prisons that are bursting at the seems.

Death penalty...

stovelid

funnyname wrote: »

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0430/prison.html

Quote:
The Director of the Prison Service says up to 20 inmates will be electronically tagged on temporary release as part of a new pilot programme due to begin in June.

Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern announced the introduction of the new satellite tracking pilot programme at the Prison Officers' Association annual conference in Killarney.

Brian Purcell said these would be low-risk prisoners from all over the country.

One of them is likely to be the convicted murderer and rapist Geoffrey Evans, who is in jail for life for raping and killing two young women in Wicklow and Galway in 1975.

Evans has been in a coma in the Mater Hospital since December 2008.

Mr Purcell said tagging him would allow the Irish Prison Service to assess the effects on high-tech medical equipment in a hospital environment.

He said it would also save the €900,000 a year it costs to keep six prisoner officers guarding him 24 hours every day.

The Minister for Justice said he did not think there were moral or ethical issues involved and that Evans would benefit from not been subjected to the indignity of having prison officers with him all the time.

Do they really think he'll pull through?

funnyname

Not if he's 1st of the gang to die.

old_aussie

Bring back the death penalty, that will stop the overcrowding continuing.

The link/story by funnyname about Shaw and Evans makes the Irish police look like fools(and that's being kind to them).

The judicial system appears to be run by clowns.

So they want to Tag prisoners, is that because they are facebook prisoners?

Smart Bug

Okay, maybe focus the prison system more on rehabilitation rather than blanket incarceration?

Decriminalise all end drug use so policing and sentencing efforts can be focused on more serious crimes?

Higher focus on youth outreach programmes in under-privileged (for want of a better word) areas?

Damn, I'm in a real pinko-liberal frame of mind today.

Scratch the above, kill 'em all rabble rabble.

orourkeda

funnyname wrote: »

Then I did a search to find out more about this prisoner and found this, beggars belief

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/if-theres-an-argument-for-capital-punishment-then-these-murderous-buffoons-make-it-well-1592841.html

A simple question here.

If this writer does not like how the irish judiciary administer justice then why would he\she want them to have the option of administering the death penalty. That seems hypocritical to me.

The death penalty deters nobody. It offers nothing and solves nothing other than societys need for revenge.

PCPhoto

funk that .... release them on tags ...if they re-offend....lock 'em up for mimimum 20years (and I dont care if its only a series of robberies...if yer gonna habitually re-offend then you dont deserve to be released)

my only issue is ...how accurate is the electronic tagging ?

Can we not do this with the childrens court ....tag the little scrote sacks (especially those on a curfew or barred from sections of the city) ....anyway... if they re-offend, send them to prisons in Donegal or something - miles away from family/friends.

actually - while we're at it ... why not build prisons in REMOTE areas and tell the families tough sh1t if you have to travel to see little jimmy - he's a scrote !!

YFlyer

racso1975 wrote: »

Have ya heard of one of the first proposed candidates?

A man who in 1975 raped and killed two women and has been in prision since. In early 2008 he got sick and went into a coma and continues to be today. This man is considered such high risk that we spend 900k a year to have 6 guards watch him 24/7!!!!!!!!:rolleyes:

WTF!!! He's hardly gonna come out of a coma after nearly 3 years and tear it out of the hospital!!

Such a fluckin waste of money!!!!!

He is binding his time.