David McDonald - Unlocked: An Irish Prison Officers Story

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First published by Sandycove in 2022

Copyright David McDonald with Mick Clifford, 2022

The moral right of the copyright holders has been asserted

Cover photographs Trevillion and Topfoto

ISBN: 978-1-844-88620-3

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For Matthew

I was in the screening area of the Midlands Prison when the call came through. It was 5.20 p.m. on 28 December 2012. Get down to the circle, I was told. We have a situation.

In that instant I was torn between the high of an adrenalin rush and the sinking feeling that the evening was not going to unfold as had been planned. After a straight month at work I was already halfway out the gate. Having missed any kind of a break over Christmas, I had a few days off coming to me. The highlight of the down time would be an upcoming Tommy Tiernan gig in Vicar Street.

In my head I was already sitting there at one of the tables, surrounded by family, a creamy pint in front of me, and everyone wired for laughs. Now, with the door in sight, I was being hauled back to the present with a bang.

When I arrived at the circle, I was met by one of the governors. He told me that all the prisoners in D division were out on the landings. They were tooled up and refusing to go into their cells.

What do they want? I asked.

They want you gone, out of here, transferred, I was told.

D block in the Midlands Prison housed some of the most notorious prisoners in the state, the kind of gangland figures who often feature in the media. Some of them had murdered. A few of them were at the level where they ordered murders. Before being imprisoned, these men had run mini empires. Inside, they still managed to maintain their status as significant players in the drugs business.

And that was their problem with me. I was in charge of the OSG, the Operational Support Group, in the Midlands. One of our main tasks was to stop the flow of contraband into prisons. The two big items are drugs and phones. Both multiply in value once they make it inside a prisons gates.

As on the outside, the season of goodwill is celebrated in prison. Not being in a position to stroll down to the local pub for a few extra pints, prisoners make do with drugs other than alcohol.

The volume of the stuff flowing into prisons ratchets up at this time of year, as for other big events like an Ireland soccer match. These occasions take on an even greater significance inside. They relieve for a short time the mind-numbing boredom and tedium that passes for life in prison. For those who deal in drugs, Christmas is a time to make a killing.

Phones also jack up in value in prison at this time of year. Naturally, prisoners want to be in closer contact with loved ones, and thats understandable. But it is against the law and for very good reason. Phones can, and are, used on the inside to run crime gangs outside. They are also another lucrative form of contraband for the gang leaders who have control in prison. A phone can be rented out for anything between 50 and 100 a night. But if it is discovered and forfeited, the cost is around 1,800 in compensation, which has to be paid to the gang leader. That can be the start of months of hell for both the prisoner and his family. Effectively, the prisoner becomes a slave.

Our job was to intercept, disrupt, frustrate the flow of drugs and phones into and around the prison. By 2012, the OSG had been in operation for four years as a separate dedicated unit in the Irish Prison Service. It takes time to build up a unit from scratch, but by then we had resources and confidence, and we decided to put down a marker. All the stops were pulled out to make sure that, this Christmas, Santa wouldnt be coming for those who oversaw the drugs trade. We put plans in place. We were relentless in disrupting the flow of drugs by coming down hard on the known channels, especially visitors.

For us, the results were very satisfying. We confiscated what amounted to a whole truckload of drugs that December. Upwards of 10,000 tablets were seized. Id been liaising with garda in Portlaoise, where the Midlands Prison is located, and they arrested fourteen visitors. Four were arrested on Christmas Eve alone. Now, in the anticlimactic days that followed, tensions had risen. The big boys were pissed off that their Christmas market had been ruined. They were intent on wreaking some form of revenge. They blamed me and they wanted me out.

So, Im standing there, digesting the news that I am the focus of what is building up to be a riot. There were about 150 prisoners on the three landings in D division and 80 staff in the whole prison at the time. Naturally, I was far from relaxed about what was happening. On one level, I could have enjoyed a little pat on the back for myself. The prisoners anger was as a result of me, and the men and women I oversaw, having done a good job over the previous few weeks. But there and then, shaken out of my gate fever, I had to concentrate on how to rescue a situation that was on the brink of getting out of hand.

There was no way we could let the men stay out on the landings all night. That would have been a concession. Their protest was a show of strength, and it was important that we regained control. There was every possibility of violence. The officers who had been on the landings reported that the prisoners were tooled up with the usual weapons. Somebody saw one of them waving a pool ball in a sock. We didnt know but assumed that they also had a good share of chivs: home-made knives in which razor blades are melted into toothbrush handles.

Rescuing the situation rested with the OSG. We were in charge of security and, crucially, we had the dogs. My direct boss, a chief officer in the OSG, Ben Buckley, was based in Cork but operated throughout the country. In the Midlands I reported directly to him rather than to the prison governors.

First thing I directed was the monitoring of the internal phones. Now that the prisoners on D division had the run of the place, they would be using the opportunity to call home. Intelligence garnered from the calls would help assess what we were up against, and what exactly they wanted apart from my head.

The calls were as we had expected:

Its kicking off tonight

Were tooled up and ready for them

That bastard McDonald is going to get his

Well show them that were not taking their shit