St. Patrick's Institution, North Circular Road, Dublin 7, is an Irish penal facility for 16- to 21-year-old males. It has a capacity of 217 beds and had an average inmate population of 221 in 2009. It is a closed, medium security prison

Prison

A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...

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History

It was opened in 1956 when inmates from the borstal

Borstal

A borstal was a type of youth prison in the United Kingdom, run by the Prison Service and intended to reform seriously delinquent young people. The word is sometimes used loosely to apply to other kinds of youth institution or reformatory, such as Approved Schools and Detention Centres. The court...

 located in Clonmel

Clonmel

Clonmel is the county town of South Tipperary in Ireland. It is the largest town in the county. While the borough had a population of 15,482 in 2006, another 17,008 people were in the rural hinterland. The town is noted in Irish history for its resistance to the Cromwellian army which sacked both...

, Co. Tipperary

Tipperary

Tipperary is a town and a civil parish in South Tipperary in Ireland. Its population was 4,415 at the 2006 census. It is also an ecclesiastical parish in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly, and is in the historical barony of Clanwilliam....

were transferred there. Prior to this the facility had functioned as the female section of Mountjoy Prison from its opening in 1850. Although situated within the Mountjoy Prison Complex, it is administered as a completely separate facility. An education unit was built in the last 20 years. In 2002 a new unit to cater for boys aged between fourteen and sixteen years was built but up until 2004 this had not been used.