Dumbrell v Governor of St. Patrick's Institution
| Jurisdiction | Ireland |
| Judge | Finnegan P. |
| Judgment Date | 31 January 2006 |
| Neutral Citation | [2006] IEHC 9 |
| Docket Number | [2006 No. 71SS],2006/71/SS |
| Court | High Court |
| Date | 31 January 2006 |
[2006] IEHC 9
THE HIGH COURT
BETWEEN
AND
ONSTITUTION ART 40.4.2
PRISONS (IRELAND) ACT 1907 S1
PRISON RULES 1947 RULE 38
CRIMINAL LAW
Sentence
Prisoner - Release date - Calculation of remission - Loss of remission - Certainty -Breaches of prison discipline - Remission onlost days - Application of - Principles applicable - Prisons (Ireland) Act 1907 (7 Ed7, c 19), s 1 - Prison Rules 1947 (SI320/1947), r 38(1) - Habeas corpus refused(2006/71SS - Finnegan P - 31/1/2006) [2006]IEHC 9, [2006] 4 IR 268
DUMBRELL v GOVERNOR OF ST PATRICKS INSTITUTION
On the 6th October 2005 the Applicant was sentenced to three consecutive terms of imprisonment, the term of nine months with a term of three months consecutive thereto and a further three months consecutive to that three months. His release date with full remission would be the 16th January 2006. He was notified that his release date having regard to loss of remission would be the 6th April. On the return to an Order which I made on the 23rd January 2006 it was disclosed that the Applicant during his term of imprisonment has been convicted on 29 occasions of breaches of prison discipline. Various penalties were imposed including loss of remission and the total loss of remission is 98 days. However in calculating a release date a prisoner is allowed remission on lost days. The practice in the Prison Service for calculating a release date involves converting the sentence to days (in this case 456 days) adding on lost remission (in this case 98 days) and arriving at a total (in this case 554 days) remission of ¼ is then applied reducing the 554 days to 415 days. Against this the Applicant is entitled to credit for time served between conviction and appeal 64 days. The result is that the total time to be served by the Applicant is 351 days and his release on the basis of this calculation is the 29th March 2006.
In the Applicant's case there was a miscalculation in that I was initially informed that his release date was the 6th April. On the evidence of the Deputy Governor of St. Patricks Institution Mr. Declan Murphy I am satisfied that this miscalculation occurred as a result of human error. The calculation is carried out on computer but is then checked manually. Mr. Murphy believes that the error occurred on the input of information to the computer and was not noticed as the Officer who would normally carry out the manual check was absent. He was however sufficiently concerned that an error occurred that the release dates for 177 other inmates were checked both on computer and manually and were found to be correct. Upon this basis I accept that the most likely cause for the miscalculation of the Applicant's release date was human error as described in evidence by Mr. Murphy.
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Price v Governor of Wheatfield Prison
...the hearing. 8 The trial judge further noted that this convention was acknowledged in Dumbrell v. Governor of St. Patrick's Institution [2006] IEHC 9, [2006] 4 I.R. 268. However, it appeared that the appropriate method of calculating release dates was not argued or contested in that case so......