I couldn’t read that without the music from ” The Great Escape” echoing in my head.

Prison break from a “semi open” prison. I’m guessing they didn’t exactly dig a tunnel here

It’s a semi-open prison “within the secure confines of the prison”. It’s semi-open in that prisoners are not locked into their cells at night, but they are still locked into the prison.

These kinds of set-up are usually used for prisoners who are nearing the end of their sentences and have behaved themselves etc. It’s a chance to become accustomed to some kind of normality before re-entering the free world.
The rigid, structured, artificial prison life can take its toll on a person and leave them unaccustomed to a normal life and how to take care of themselves. Putting them in a semi-open prison for the last chunk of their sentence is an attempt to get them ready for release.

Definitely Prison Break! Two brothers!!!!! Lincoln Burrows and Michael Scofield :)

Thanks did not think I would laugh today !!

They were brothers! Apart from that, that comment was the best I’ve seen in a long time!

*established

They want to check and see is there any spoons missing
Shawshank Roscommon

@Paul

The two Romanians didn’t need them, they used the front door! No joking. Heard it on the news, they were in jail for breaking parking meters and taking the money.

What do you mean by “in a cheap way”? We already keep them in pretty shoddy prisons.
After how many convictions does one give up the right to be treated as a normal person? Does it matter what the convictions were for?
Do we want to be the kind of society that just gives up on its citizens, rather than trying to create a society in which ex-offenders cease to offend?

The majority of offenders do stop offending. Most crimes are committed by young males, who tend to desist during their 20s. They often go on to live respectable and productive lives.

Once a person has any kind of criminal record, they can find it very hard to get a job, integrate with people etc. This will push the person towards crime because without a job or decent friends they can’t live a good quality of life. Can we do something to change this? These are factors that must be considered before a “throw away the key” approach.

It is never going to be cheap to lock people up for life. Surely it makes more sense to try to stop people from offending and get them living decent lives than it does to have massive prisons full of people slowly going insane.

Ffs they broke into parking meters not some violent serious crime yet the flog them and hang them brigade out in force. What about the bankers etc that have robbed and cheated millions from the tax payers maybe they should be tagged and locked up before we lose the head about these guys who just stole lose change

It’s not cheap to house these people but how much does it cost for all the free legal aid these repeat offenders get not to mention the waste of court time and space and then there’s the victims ( you know the poor person minding their own business that these animals pick on). nIf you want to know how many chances one gets well if a person commits crimes against people more four or five times a serious sentence is needed. n

Chris, so you’re saying that those who can’t afford legal representation shouldn’t have it provided for them if they have a previous conviction?
You are now saying that someone should be prejudged to be guilty before a trial even begins if you are talking about free legal aid.

Even you, who are advocating locking people up for life after a certain number of offences, can’t decide how many offences constitute “enough”. Four or five? Which is it? Does it matter what the offence was?

There is a man in the US who has been locked up since the 1980s for stealing a pizza. The state in question had a three-strikes-and-you’re-out law and the pizza theft was his third offence so now he’s in jail for life. Is that the kind of country you want to live in?

You’ve changed your “throw away the key” argument to a “serious sentence” one. That makes much more sense, and in fact the courts do take into account previous behaviour, previous convictions, and other factors. However, the punishment has to fit the crime so if, for example, someone merely stole money from a parking meter, we couldn’t justify a massively long sentence.

He will have to commission a report on it first though

Cool hand Luke was locked up for breaking parking meters too! It seems he didn’t like prison either!!

Open prisons are for low-risk prisoners who are nearing the end of their sentence. They are designed to get prisoners to start taking some responsibility for themselves before release, and to allow them to become reaccustomed to some form of reality before re-entering society.
They are cheaper to run and generally work quite well, with few escapes. There is not much point in attempting to escape from an open prison because those who are placed in them are usually due for release soon anyway, provided they behave themselves. Where escapes do occur, the prisoners are normally apprehended quickly.

The two men in this article were not being held in an open prison, though. Castlerea is a closed prison, surrounded by high walls and fences. The section they were being held in was semi-open, which means that they were not locked into their cells and could wander around their particular section; but it was located within the confines of the prison.

Is there a bar in an open prison?

Antonio Dufrainio

Good idea – make sure to turn them into complete monsters before releasing them back into society…

The Supermax prisons in the US are not dissimilar to what you have just described. They clearly aren’t a deterrent as they are overflowing and the US has one of the highest incarceration rates per capita in the world.

Cages! lol. That’s gas. Kind Mad Maxish, but I like it:-)

If you’d like to donate the millions to make this happen then they might consider it!

Is that directed at me?

I wasn’t directly comparing Ireland and the US: I was attempting to show that Supermax-style prisons (keeping prisoners locked up in small cages for 23 hours a day) do not serve as any more of a deterrent than other types of punishment.
And they do serious damage to a prisoner’s sanity and ability to function in a normal society.

This country is a disgrace
U can get your dog and cat chipped for a 100 euro

Em Paul, that’s not a tracking chip like a GPS, that’s a chip that contains the owners data if read by a scanner. You’d have to find the missing prisoners to read their chips, which would kind of defeat the purpose.

Also, it would be insanely expensive to chip every prisoner even at 100 quid a pop, which is bullshit, given the fact we have so few prison breaks and they are nearly all apprehended immediately.

Known Irish justice they’d be chipped on their toenails.

I know one that might!

Why dont the prison tell us the names of the prisoners. There is some dangerous people in that place.