How bad is Mountjoy?

Omackeral wrote:

Mountjoy Prison is beside the Mater Hospital and Mountjoy Garda Station. In the case of the cop shop, they even share a couple of office buildings. Also, there's plenty of residential dwellings within a literal stone's throw.

I thought I read somewhere that Wheat field & Cloverhill are too close to the hospital too.

Another point is that they use transmitters to block the mobile phone signal and its illegal to do so. At least it used to be illegal, I don't know if its changed. The Savoy cinema in Dublin City had these blockers 15 or 20 years ago & had to remove them. I think they were fined. Pity cos I think every cinema should be phone free.

Sleeper12 wrote: »

The poster implied that he got 4 years for a violent crime. He stated that he was in two fights in prison and got out after one year. This is impossible. If he ratted out a dealer with half a million euros worth of drugs he wouldn't get out after one year. Same poster suggested that mutual relief is common place in prison when it's almost unheard of.

He didnt say that he got P19ed for the fights so that mightnt have been a factor but definitely still doesnt sound right. Yeah and the "mutual relief" bit is happening all over isnt right either.

dar100 wrote: »

You may think it a bit said, and thats ok. However a bunch of 16 year olds serving a number of years in custody while progressing through one of the most developmentally difficult times in their lives would disagree. Nor is that the reason why they were incarcerated in the first place.... I wonder if your keyboard warrior judgement would extend to actually saying this to one of these individuals?

Dont think its sad at all - its totally natural. I remember being 16 and in the buys school and hanging around at lunchtime or after school and waiting for the girls school to come out and talking to the girls like that.

Were there women Officers in St Pats back when you were there?

Any of the lads I knew who had been there said it was worse than the Joy and much more **** went on in there. Heard some crazy stories. How bad was it when you were there?

dar100 wrote: »

Its part true, years ago there was something in it, especially for younger crowd coming from pats to spike island. Cork is more like the Joy, i was sent to cork from paths myself when fairly young and it was grand. Such is the nature of gangs that none of this type of fighting based on where you are from happens anymore

Ah FFS what did you do to deserve Cork?:rolleyes: Must have been pretty bad. I was told I was getting transferred to the Midlands and wasnt happy with that but got to stay in Dublin in the end.

I remember reading a qhile back that Freddie T got transferred to Cork and wasnt happy about it. And tried to put in an appeal saying that it would be hard for his mother to visit him down there:mad:

Mark25 wrote: »

He didnt say that he got P19ed for the fights so that mightnt have been a factor but definitely still doesnt sound right. Yeah and the "mutual relief" bit is happening all over isnt right either.





Dont think its sad at all - its totally natural. I remember being 16 and in the buys school and hanging around at lunchtime or after school and waiting for the girls school to come out and talking to the girls like that.

Were there women Officers in St Pats back when you were there?

Any of the lads I knew who had been there said it was worse than the Joy and much more **** went on in there. Heard some crazy stories. How bad was it when you were there?




Ah FFS what did you do to deserve Cork?:rolleyes: Must have been pretty bad. I was told I was getting transferred to the Midlands and wasnt happy with that but got to stay in Dublin in the end.

I remember reading a qhile back that Freddie T got transferred to Cork and wasnt happy about it. And tried to put in an appeal saying that it would be hard for his mother to visit him down there:mad:

Paths was ok, very similar in many respects to the Joy in layout, environment , lock up times, etc. However, cells were more modernised with toilets and sinks, and it was good that you got a single cell if sentenced, remand had to share. Yes officers were both gender, and generally they were ok.

Ah Cork was a long story, I spent a year there, then two months in The Block, which is like solitary confinement for 23 hours a day with no access to aTv, radio, smokes if you smoke etc,. I then moved up to the old portlaoise to finish my sentence, that was my first sentence and unfortunately not my last.

However, i was released from prison in 2007 and haven't been back since, i did receive a 6 year suspended sentence in 2009 for offences committed in 2005. Ironically that was my first suspended sentence, my first ever conviction was 4 years in prison.

Anyway, that all in the past, I've a degree, a masters and on my way to a Ph.D now. I rarely speak about my past this is bringing back lots of memories for me

harry Bailey esq wrote:

No need for confusion, you are entirely correct. Arbour Hill wasn't always exclusively for sex offenders until the 90s, cloverhill is exclusively for remand and Midlands is just a regular prison,on the Portlaoise site. Same way cloverhill and Wheatfield are part of the same complex,but separate prisons

For the most part that's correct but in clover Hill they have a few not on remand. Sometimes they keep the odd prisoners after conviction if they are extremely well behaved and work on reception or kitchen. They also has & May still have a wing for foreign nationals waiting to be deported. They wouldn't be convicted & they wouldn't be remand. The vast majority of clover Hill is remand and its known as a remand prison.

dar100 wrote: »

Haha was good craic. Our yards were also separated by a steel grill we could talk through, use to get visits across to each other as well and we couldn't wear our own clothes so the girls use to throw us over tshirts etc.

Edit: just had a flash back, we all had these square mirrors we use to stick out the window to get a look at each other

I went to a boarding school. It was actually the cheapest boarding school in the country and I didn't even board. I went home at 10pm every night. So I slept in my own bed but that was it. My parents scraped together the few hundred it used to cost to send me there every year. I always felt that the experience of prison is somewhat similar.

Not the violence etc. I realise the actual day to day is very, very different. However when I meet an old boarding school lad, especially one who went to the same school, we always talk about the crazy crap that went on. The way people dealt with being stuck in there, the teachers who were rough, the sound ones too. The daily routines and the stupid little things that you did to break the monotony.

I'd imagine that, in that way, it's similar where ever you have a large group of people stuck together, in the army, in a school, in a prison etc.

The thing that brought that to mind was the girls. The guys used to hang around at a part of the school where you could see girls walking home from the local convent school. We weren't allowed out and they weren't allowed in so they'd shout hello at the girls and stretch to see them over the wall.

Candie wrote: »

I think that actually was a prison.

I went to boarding school (as a boarder) in England, thankfully it wasn't as grim as that sounds.

The food in prison sounds better.

I remember once getting spag bol for dinner. the pasta had been fecked into a huge pan of boiling water but never stirred. Each table got what looked like one massive packet of pasta that was stuck together in a massive cylinder. Completely uneatable.
There would also be a loaf of bread on each table. the woman who would put it there would tear open the sliced pan and split it with her hands. In the process her thumbs would push through so what you ended up with was two halves of a sliced pan with massive thumb holes going through them. There was always an argument about who got stuck with the slices that had a hole and who got the slice near the bottom that was ok.

The school was grim and that's what made me think of what it was like in prison, Think I'd still prefer that place over prison though

dar100 wrote: »

Doesn't sound patronizing at all. Thank you for your kind words.

I too wish you well for the future

GAA Beo wrote: »

Places like Mountjoy are worse if you don't know people in there. I'd say a lot of lads in there know each other from outside, also all the gangs etc. Could be hard to keep your head down. Seen an Irish prison film on netflix decent enough called Michael inside, wonder how accurate it is?

Wonder how often lads get slashed in the face with a blade or get the boiling water and sugar treatment? You could be minding your own business and some toerag could take a disliking to you.

Yeah much easier if you know lads in there already and I did both times. Yeah there are slashings but not like every day or anything. I only saw one actually happen but there were others when I was in. There were always reasons for them either from outside or something that happened in there. Honestly if you were just "minding your own business" and hadnt pissed of anyone you probably wouldnt get bothered. Think it might have been worse before I was in there.

WinnyThePoo wrote: »

Would the libraries have a good selection?. Can you order books if there not available?

Was alright. Not all lads would be readers or could read. Crime books were probably most popilar. Read a good few in my time. That book that someone mentioned before "The Joy" I read that in there - hadnt heard of it before. Kinda strange reading about the place you were in. Maybe if I had of read it before mightnt have ended up in there:p

If people were studying theyd get the books for them and they could order books from the other prisons too