Although the Fourth Report of the Inspector of Prisons and Places of Detention has got some media coverage, none of it reflects the humanity that informs every page of this review of conditions in our jails.

Tragically . . . but perhaps unsurprisingly . . . at the same time as this report was being loaded onto the Department of Justice website, two prisoners died in Mountjoy prison, one found hanging in the protection cell he had asked to be moved to after being involved in a row with other prisoners, including a murderer; the other a young Wexford man who seemingly died of a drug overdose.

These deaths are the raw, hopeless, undignified reality of life within the Irish prison system, one which , as Brian Purcell, director general of the Irish Prison Service points out, may be undergoing profound change, but certainly not at anything like the radical pace of reform that is needed.

Writing in his highly readable style, referring to himself rather archaically in the third person as "the inspector", Kinlen reveals the unsavoury and unsanitary norm: still no toilets in Mountjoy cells, prisoners on mattresses on the floor, an overstretched probation service, an understaffed psychiatric service, school facilities closed to house transport units, and a young offenders prison he describes as "a finishing school for bullying and developing criminal skills."

Kinlen acknowledges some improvements and in fact some institutions are praised, but mostly it is a wasteland of substandard facilities for incarceration which promote recidivism rather than rehabilitation.

The truth is few people care about prisoners. Kinlen is cutting: "A famous Minister for Justice, with much the same background as the current minister, said 'prisoners have no rights.' That ethos seems to be omnipresent."

For Michael McDowell, the greater political priority seems to be to continue to cut the albeit scandalous level of prison officer overtime rather than effect a humanitarian regime behind prison walls.

Prisoners have no voice. There is only the grinding, boring, largely hopeless environment of most of our detention centres, where only a minority of sex offenders attend counselling; in which Mountjoy has become the largest methadone clinic in the country; and where there is no music, little drama, and just the odd splash of art to enliven imaginations and hopefully spark rehabilitation.

Kinlen deserves to be heard. He wants prisoners, as in Northern Ireland, to have their own statutory, independent inspectorate and their own ombudsman so that reform has legislative backing.

His report is moving, humorous, anecdotal and at times deliciously gossipy. . . all the things that life outside prison walls is.

Its foundation stone is a sense of humanity, a humanity that can and should be a powerful trigger for change.