Vol. 434 No. 6
57 Mr. Rabbitte asked the Minister for Justice the number of secure places which are currently available for juvenile girl offenders who are certified as being of unruly character by the courts; and if she will make a statement on the matter.
A very small number of such offenders are committed in any one year. It would be an even rarer event to have more than one such offender committed at any time. Such offenders would be committed to one or other of the women's prisons at Mountjoy in Dublin or at Limerick Prison. When such an offender is committed to either prison the authorities are obliged to house her separately from adult offenders.
The physical accommodation for female offenders is extremely limited. There is no separate facility as such for housing juvenile female offenders who have been certified as unruly. The practice, therefore, is to provide such prisoners with a single cell and to arrange, as far as this is humanly possible, for their recreating separately from the adult inmates. In the case of the Mountjoy women's prison such offenders are assigned a special prison officer to themselves from committal who remains assigned to them until their release.
