Young people in prison 50% more likely to spend their days confined to their cells

If you are under the age of 21 in the Irish prison system, you are 50 percent more likely to be on a restricted regime – akin to solitary confinement – than the prison population as a whole.

For criminologist Kevin Warner, this points to a worrying trend of young people falling between the cracks of the justice system.

“These youngsters are treated much worse,” says Warner, former national co-ordinator of education in the prison system. “And no doubt the impact on people so young is likely to be even more severe."

The most recent figures from the Irish Prison Service (IPS), released in July 2025, say that 14.7 percent of all people incarcerated across the prison estate were on restricted regimes – which overlaps with, but doesn't map directly onto, what is known in other jurisdictions as solitary confinement.

But a higher share – 21.6 percent – of people aged 18 to 20 in prison are on such a regime, Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan, of Fianna Fáil, said in a July 2026 response in to a question from Jennifer Whitmore TD, of the Social Democrats. The same question, asked by Whitmore in April 2024, showed a similar share.

This means they spend 19 to 23 hours a day in their cell, according to responses Whitmore got.

“They are about 50 percent more likely to be confined in that way," Warner says. “These are, you know, the lost boys."

Getting on a restricted regime

The majority of people on heavily restricted regimes in Ireland have requested it, on the grounds of personal safety. But others might be put on such regimes by the authorities.

Rule 63 of the Prison Rules 2007 allows a prisoner to be separated from others who may pose a significant risk to them, at their own request or by a governor, based on information from An Garda Síochána or other intelligence sources.

“Prisoners on Rule 63 may associate with others in compatible risk groups and are therefore not necessarily considered to be in solitary confinement,” an IPS spokesperson said in July.

Mark Kelly, chief inspector of prisons, notes that while people on heavily restricted regimes may share a cell with other people due to overcrowding, this can make the psychological impact worse on those people, not better.

However a person gets there – on the authorities' initiative, or at the prisoner's request – restricted regime takes a toll.

This was also noted in a 2016 report on young people in the justice system from the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice (JCFJ), Developing Inside.

“Whether punishment or protection, severe confinement such as this is likely to have negative psychological, emotional and physical effects on the person ... and is likely to compound the effects of other adverse circumstances such as cell sharing and inadequate sanitation,” the report says.

It may also restrict opportunities for purposeful activity such as training, education, and work, it says.

A spokesperson for the IPS said there is extensive international research documenting the negative impact of prolonged confinement.

And that a “systematic review synthesising this research is currently being completed by a UCC researcher in collaboration with the Irish Prison Service”.

Protection or punishment?

The Children Act, 2001 brought major changes to how young people are treated by the justice system here, said Warner, the criminologist.

It brought a range of positive new responses for dealing with people under the age of 18, like youth diversion, he says. But it also meant that those between 18 and 21 were no longer treated as juveniles.

Previously, they would have been sent to Fort Mitchel prison on Cork’s Spike Island, the low-security Shanganagh Castle open prison in Shankill, or St. Patrick’s Institution in Phibsborough.

Now, they are sent into the adult system.

That under-21s are more likely to be on restricted regimes suggests that they feel more vulnerable and at risk in the prison environment, says Keith Adams, penal policy advocate with the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice (JCFJ).

“It probably suggests gang affiliation too, and concerns for their own safety,” he says.

“My sense is that the young men, particularly, are more likely to be of the low-level kind of drug offences too,” he says. “They've just accumulated over time, and the judge is probably sick of it.”

Siobhán Buckley, whose 2022 doctoral thesis for Maynooth University, Contrasts in Tolerance, looked at the punitiveness in adult and youth criminal justice systems.

While in the last century, 18- to 21-year-olds were regarded as “young adults” and sent to a separate kind of institution, now 18-year-olds are treated as fully grown adults, she says.

“Which can be in conflict with neuroscientific developmental research, which states we are still developing up to the age of 25,” she says.

“There is a need to rethink how we are approaching young adults and the fact that there is very much a cliff edge in Ireland at the age of 18 when it comes to youth and adult justice,” she says.

The transition from youth to adult justice is very harsh and punitive, she says. “Which does result in kind of behavioural issues.”

Other jurisdictions, she notes, like Scotland and Northern Ireland, still have young offender institutions for 18- to 21-year-olds.

While prisoners in Ireland might be put on restrictive regime for their own protection, it doesn’t justify only letting them out of the cells for an hour or two, or less, a day, says Kelly, the inspector of prisons.

Rather, the regime should be better for people in this situation, given their lives are going to be more limited, he says.

“They should be offered additional activities or additional visits to compensate for the more restricted conditions under which they are held,” he says.

Education

According to Warner, the former national co-ordinator of prison education, one of the most important reviews of the Irish justice system remains the Whitaker Report, published in 1985.

It was highly critical of how young offenders were treated, and recommended a move away from incarceration as much as possible.

While the Whitaker Report recommended a greater range of educational, work, and skills training for all incarcerated people, it stressed that “juveniles” – which included those up the age of 21 at the time – be given an even greater focus.

Referring to youngsters on heavily locked-up regimes, it said that “the sense of isolation easily leads to psychological deterioration”.

“It is important that our recommendations be applied in the most liberal way to juvenile offenders,” said the report.

The prison service did not respond directly when asked if special provisions are in place for those under the age of 21 who are on heavily restricted regimes.

Work ethic

The IPS provides prisoners with different levels of daily “gratuity” payments, depending on their behaviour, engagement with services, and whether they work.

As of 2024, the levels are €1 for basic, €1.80 for standard, and €2.54 for enhanced. They can further earn 50 cent a day if they work a day’s shift somewhere like the kitchen.

The 2016 report from the JCFJ, says that those aged below 21 were more likely to be on a basic level.

“Young adults in particular may have difficulty maintaining the behavioural standards necessary for progression owing to their psychosocial immaturity ... and lack of coping skills and resources,” it says.

“For these same reasons, they may also be disproportionately impacted in a negative way by the loss of privileges such as family contact."

“In fact, compared to the overall adult population, there is a disproportionate number of young adults on basic and standard regimes. Reasons for this might include maturity levels and ‘acting out’, serving short sentences and not ‘progressing’ to a higher regime standard,” the report says.

This echoes the findings of the 1985 Whitaker Report which said that “any work discipline a young person may have had on entering St. Patrick's is likely to have evaporated by the time he leaves, making it more difficult for him to hold a job”.

So what do they do all day?

There is a serious lack of information on what activities people on restricted regimes actually participate in, chief prison inspector Mark Kelly said last month.

Prisons keep a “Restricted Regimes Record Book” that is meant to include a high degree of detail about the daily lives of everyone who is on Rule 63 (regime for protection), he says.

What the prison inspectors found in Mountjoy, which is common across the prison estate, Kelly says, is that the book only records what prisoners on Rule 63 are offered – not what they take up.

So, the IPS figures for July 2025 mean, really, that 216 people on 22-hour regime were offered up to two hours out of their cell every day.

If there's no accurate recording of whether or not they actually take up that offer, nobody has a really complete picture of what's happening, he says.

“And in reality, what we find from visiting these places, also talking to prisoners, is that after a while on this regime, there tends to be people who lose the will to leave their cell and go and take their exercise," says Kelly.

“Because their lives are so restricted that after a certain time, they don't really see the point in doing it, and that's quite often not being recorded," Kelly says.

Warner says that access to addiction and mental health treatment, as well as education courses can also be miniscule for those on heavy regimes.

A spokesperson for the Irish Prison Service said on Thursday that the status of each prisoner on restricted regime is regularly reviewed. “If possible, prisoners can be transferred to other institutions where a restricted regime would not be necessary.”

Harm

Younger prisoners are more likely to self-harm, according to the annual report from the IPS, released this week.

It states that in 2024, there was a rate of 2.9 self-harm episodes per 100 male prisoners, and a rate of 12.7 per 100 in female prisoners.

The highest rate of self-harm occurred in the 18–29 age cohort, with 5.3 episodes per 100 for men, and 14.3 per 100 for women.

The report says that 42 percent of all self-harm episodes were associated with various degrees of suicidal intent.

Half of all episodes occurred between the hours of 2pm and 8pm.

While the three now-closed institutions – Spike Island, Shanganagh Castle, and in particular, St. Pat’s – had their problems, says Warner, the participation in education and training courses were around 90 percent by the time they were all wound down in the 2000s and 2010s.

“Even though St Patrick's was problematic, what replaced it seems to me to be vastly worse,” he says.

The most recent figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show that more than three-quarters – 77 percent – of those aged less than 21 released from custody in 2020 re-offended within three years of release.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.