Rundale

Keith Adams

Image: CCTV Graffiti – Google Images – CC Licensing

Ivan Rosney died in Cloverhill Prison in September 2020. He entered the stairwell on the ground floor during a control and restraint procedure. 157 seconds later, carried by officers, he emerged on the first floor and subsequently died after failed attempts to resuscitate.

What happened in those 157 seconds? Despite the ubiquity of surveillance equipment in modern prisons, the upper part of this staircase was in a CCTV blindspot. Ivan’s family will never know his last moments. Neither will the Irish public whose taxes fund the prison system.

In this essay, I will suggest that prisons are places of death, expressed through both violence and neglect. Then I will discuss the ways in which prison deaths are obscured and framed by the State, particularly in this specific case. To close, I will propose that an abolitionist position offers a response to these State-inflicted deaths, which reflect the institutional violence of prisons, and will offer examples of how campaigning and grass-roots activism can reimagine a society beyond our carceral system.

Places of Death

Prisons are places of death. Within prison research, death has been broadened to also include variants like “social death” and “civil death,” but it is inescapable that prisons remain locations of bodily death. In Ireland, in the ten years up to 2024, 123 people have died in our prisons. But there has been a significant increase in the rate of deaths recently, with 54 people dying from 2022 to 2024. Stated causes include suicide, overdose, homicide, and illness. Many families are delayed in knowing the details of the death as the Coroner’s Office—the final part of the investigative process for a death in custody— still has 49 deaths from 2015 to 2024 pending.

Over fifty deaths in three years should pose a challenge to the Irish prison system’s claim of “safe and secure custody.” But, in many ways, there is a mundanity to it all which allows it to be obscured. The death of a psychiatric patient, neglected by the health functions of the State and confined in a prison, is managed by legislative loopholes and political priorities.

Ivan Rosney had four children. He was on remand for breaching a barring order a few days earlier. Ivan also had schizophrenia and was on antipsychotic medication. In his short time in prison, prior to his death, he likely experienced intolerable pain, distress, and rapidly deteriorating mental health from the sensory assault of an overcrowded remand prison.

Force can be exercised in various ways in prison. In Loose Screw, a book by a former UK prison officer, Jim Dawkins discussed the permissible administration of violence through control and restraint techniques:

“C & R [control and restraint] … [is] something that was designed to prevent injury and damage occurring to both staff and prisoners during incidents, but many staff abuse this knowledge and adapt their skills to inflict as much pain as possible to inmates. So, control and restraint, which appears to be a legitimate use of prison officer authority and power, is an opportunity to use greater pain than necessary.”

This is described as a “masking of violence” where a legal procedure invisibilises officer violence. Yet, Dawkins further describes the retaliation or “payback” which can occur following previous disturbances within cells or on landings. Reports from the Committee for the Prevention of Torture during a previous inspection visit to Cloverfield Prison revealed two cases where prisoners were improperly subdued by excessive force.

But where violence is present, so too is neglect. These degraded conditions in prison have been described as “zones of abandonment,” where the wider community withdraws its care and empathy, thereby tacitly permitting maltreatment. In 2019, Monika Nawrat died by suicide shortly after committal to Mountjoy Women’s Prison—for being unable to pay a €100 bail—after previously demonstrating self-harm and suicide ideation. Neglect does not only include the material conditions of prison but it can manifest through a lack of adherence to safety protocols. Shortcomings in record-keeping exist, including the use of control and restraint procedures, or the extent to which the monitoring of people in Special Observation cells occurs is evidence of neglect, putting incarcerated persons at risk and failing to provide safe and secure custody.

Delay and Redaction

A chain of investigations is set in motion when a person dies in an Irish prison. In life, a prisoner may have been largely invisible to external State bodies—especially when the provision of housing, healthcare, and addiction support were required—but in their death, they become (hyper)visible, prompting much activity. Initially, An Garda Síochana conduct a criminal investigation to decide if any law was broken. In this instance, the Director of Public Prosecutions decided that no criminal prosecution was warranted.

Then the Office of the Inspector of Prisons conducts an investigation into the circumstances of the death: harvesting available video footage; interviewing prison staff and prisoners in the vicinity; and considering adherence to live policies and procedures. In collaboration with the Irish Prison Service, learnings and an action report are developed. The death in custody report, accompanied with an already half-completed action plan, is provided to the Minister for Justice who chooses an appropriate time to publish the report. Following the initial flurry of activity, a period of inactivity sets in.

Various strategies are employed to limit scrutiny, with potentially problematic reports delayed for years. In the Rosney case, the report was sent to Minister Helen McEntee in October 2024 and only published by Minister Jim O’Callaghan in February 2026, over 15 months later. Pressure mounted following an excoriating RTE documentary on the warehousing of psychiatric patients in prisons, thereby forcing the Minister’s hand. But any delay is advantageous, as the argument can be made that the prison system has long moved on. Another benefit of the delayed release of death in custody reports is that they are framed as standalone cases. Like road traffic deaths, each is an individual tragedy but no pattern should be discerned so our criminal justice institutions remain safeguarded in the face of the death of those under their care.

Of late, redaction has been added to the playbook when publishing death in custody reports. While the Inspector expressed “deep reservations about the manner in which Mr. J [Ivan Rosney] was restrained and about the extent of the external and internal injuries to his body revealed at Post Mortem”— this key section of his report was fully redacted. Legal provision exists in the Prison Rules to do so but redaction is a deeply political act and strongly suggests the presence of findings which the State would prefer to remain hidden.

State-Inflicted Deaths and Abolition

If indeed the death of Ivan Rosney was a horrific reflection of the intrinsic violence of prisons, then how are we to proceed? A reformist position would seek a strengthening of oversight mechanisms and greater adherence to policies and procedures. But if the prison is constrained by its institutional violence, structural harm, and neglect, then we need to embrace a more radical path and seek to move beyond the prison. Abolitionism offers such a map.

For abolitionists, deaths in prison are treated as State-inflicted deaths and structural violence, rather than isolated incidents of violence or neglect. The prison abolitionist project is rooted in a vision of a future with no prisons. Abolitionist imagination, as an instrument of critique, rejects any power to punish and seeks to abolish penal apparatus in favour of community problem-solving, universal social services, greater wealth redistribution, and investment in social goods. Lives of dignity, infrastructure of care, and humane social structures are the goals.

Yet, short-term strategies are also required to begin to decentre the place of the prison in our society and collective imagination. Justice for those who die in prison and the truth of State-inflicted deaths are essential to start dismantling the prevailing culture of violence and neglect. Institutional power to punish marginalised groups is maintained through the hiddenness of their deaths in redaction and delay. But, for the abolitionist, if an institution is intrinsically violent, then it should be dismantled and obstructed at every turn. What does this look like in the Irish context?

I will point to two examples, one which exists in Ireland and one which doesn’t. In England and Wales, INQUEST strives to reveal the truth of deaths in custody. Alongside legal casework support during investigations, their work also involves a number of actions at a community level.  They facilitate the creation of supportive spaces for bereaved people to “make connections with others, grow solidarity, and identify the systemic issues bereaved people face and push for change together.” In addition, commemoration is core to both remember those who died and to challenge state narratives which would “blame, dehumanise or erase them.” This remembering is the opposite of redaction which seeks to forget. This creation of solidaristic bonds is central to INQUEST’s work, laying the foundation for their national campaigning.

Another example, energised through a local grass roots movement, is the Stop Cork Prison Expansion campaign. At present, the Irish Government intends to create an additional 1,600 prison spaces by 2031 as a response to over-imprisonment. This will involve refurbishments, the extension of existing wings, and the building of new prisons at a cost of almost €500 million. Beside the existing Cork Prison, a second prison will be built on the site of the old, closed prison. The Cork chapter of the Irish Penal Abolition Network are currently running an awareness-raising campaign through door-knocking and leaflet drops in the nearby community, encouraging people to contact their local representatives. Film screenings and book stalls support this raising of the public consciousness. Many people sent to our prisons are there on short sentences (less than 12 months) having committed petty property offences. Many are experiencing mental ill-health and addiction support needs, alongside extreme housing precarity. Limiting the number of available prison places and diverting these resources to community services and housing supports would allow new expressions of solidarity to emerge and prevent structural violence being compounded.

Of the various traditions engaged in penal policy, deaths in custody are taken most seriously by abolitionists. While the State seeks to delay and obscure, the abolitionist’s strategy is simple: to reveal the institutional violence and expose its contradictions, while also reducing the size of the carceral system so less people are exposed to harm.