The High Court has ordered Wheatfield Prison to provide Daniel McDonnell with about two hours of social interaction a day on average, at least five days a week, after finding his prolonged solitary confinement continued to breach his constitutional rights.
The order also requires the prison to permit two family visits each week, each lasting about an hour. The visits may count towards the daily social interaction period. The court said how that interaction is arranged is for prison authorities to decide.
Mr Justice Cregan delivered the judgment on 20 March 2015 in a second judicial review application. In an earlier judgment, delivered on 17 February, he had found that McDonnell’s rights to bodily and psychological integrity were breached by his detention conditions. The later application sought injunctions to prevent further breaches and require the prison to vindicate those rights.
The court heard that McDonnell had been held separately for about 12 months. Wheatfield Governor Patrick Kavanagh said he faced a serious risk from other prisoners, including an opportunistic assault on the West 2 landing two days before the resumed hearing, in which McDonnell was punched and suffered a black eye. The judge accepted evidence of a real risk to McDonnell’s safety, but also noted that the Governor identified two prisoners on the landing who did not pose a threat to him.
The judge found that McDonnell’s conditions had not meaningfully changed and that he remained separated even from prisoners considered not to threaten him. Evidence before the court indicated that he was beginning to suffer from depression and had received anti-psychotic medication after psychiatric assessment. The judge concluded that the conditions continued to breach his rights, even though the prison was acting to protect his safety.
The court noted that the prison had issued a new Rule 63 detention decision on 24 February, with an end date of 23 March. That addressed legal defects identified in the earlier judgment, but did not resolve the continuing breach arising from the conditions of detention.
The injunction directs the prison to allow regular association with the two prisoners the judge found did not pose a threat, alongside other possible forms of contact such as listener conversations, family visits, education, health services or interaction during exercise and work. The court did not prescribe a detailed operating plan, leaving the structure of the interaction to the Governor.