Penal Policy and Human Rights
I would like to share some observations from my experience of visiting prisons in
Ireland. I work with homeless young people, some of whom have an addiction problem, and
many have spent time in prison, some of them go in and out of prison on a regular basis, and
a few have served long sentences. I first began working with young people in the Inner City
of Dublin in 1974 and began, in about 1975 visiting those I knew who went to prison. Over
the past forty years, I have spent most of my weekends in the various Dublin prisons.
Luckily, I have had open access to the prisons for those forty years and can wander around
the prison meeting people I know. Hopefully, that open access will still continue after this
talk, as the Director of the Irish Prison Service is listening to every word I say! Often people
I don’t know approach me and begin a conversation which leads to the building of a
relationship with them which will continue when they leave prison. It is from that
perspective I share these observations with you.
Prison is an inherently destructive experience. No matter how good the education and
training facilities – and in some of our prisons, those facilities are excellent – prison damages
people. A person’s development is intrinsically connected to the decisions they make. We
grow by making decisions and learning from the consequences, positive or negative, of those
decisions. In prison, there is little opportunity to make decisions. At every hour of every
day, you are told where you have to be and what you have to do. The only decision you are
allowed to make is to either go with the flow or resist the flow. In one prison in England,
some of the prisoners took part in a weekend “Assertiveness course” to boost their selfconfidence. When they returned to their landing and tried to put into practice what they had
learnt, they were put on punishment! Prison restricts a person’s opportunity to make
decisions and so a person inevitably leaves prison more damaged than when they went in.
That damage can be somewhat reduced by participating in education or learning new skills in
the training workshops, but it cannot be undone. Those on remand, sometimes on remand for
many months or even occasionally for over a year, have little access to education or training,
little access to those aspects of prison life which can mitigate a little the damage prison is
doing.
Apart from the inherent damage which being in prison does to a person, the label of being
an ex-prisoner does enormous damage to a person. The label which our society puts on
prisoners, that they are untrustworthy and should be kept at arm’s length, becomes a selffulfilling prophecy. The stigma which society attaches to a person in prison remains with
them for the rest of their life. It makes it very difficult to get a job on release, as more and
more employers are asking for Garda clearance. They therefore become even more
marginalised by society as a consequence of their imprisonment. It is that sense of
marginalisation which is the basis of much recidivism. As I hear from time to time: “If
nobody cares about me, why should I care about anyone else.”
Hence imprisonment should be reserved for the most serious crimes. Sending someone to
prison for 3 months for a public order offence is not only absurd, it is damaging to the person
and therefore to society. One young man was in court for an offence which he had
committed about twelve months previously. In the interim period, he had got his own private
rented accommodation; he had got back custody of his young child. He got a three month
prison sentence, so his child was taken back into care, he lost his accommodation and when
he came out, he was homeless again. He was understandably angry, frustrated and
demoralised. The problem created by short sentences is primarily a problem at District Court
level. Most judges have little understanding of what life in prison is like, or what life in
prison does to a person. Prison cannot and should not be used to “teach people a lesson,” or
“to give someone a short, sharp shock.”
We have a serious and growing problem of violence in our society, at all levels. I think
society should make a point that prison is reserved, primarily, for crimes involving violence.
For most other crime, not involving violence, alternatives to imprisonment should be
mandatory. In Spain, I understand that all sentences of two years or less are automatically
suspended.
The damage which prison does to people is aggravated by overcrowding. The
overcrowding in many of our prisons remains a serious problem, despite the best efforts of
the Irish Prison Service to reduce it. By overcrowding I mean living two or more to a cell,
where you are unable to have your own space, where you live, eat and use the toilet always in
the company of others. It encourages drug misuse, increases the level of violence and makes
prison an even more damaging experience than it needs to be. Indeed, many, perhaps forty or
fifty drug users whom I know, tell me that they first used drugs while in prison. To minimize
that damage, I believe we should place a cap on the numbers which any prison can hold. The
maximum capacity of a prison should be calculated on the basis of one prisoner per cell. For
me this is a matter of justice; to give prisoners their own space is to respect their dignity.
District court judges would then be faced with a dilemma – if they send this person to prison
for 3 months, someone else has to be released early – perhaps someone serving a sentence of
6 months! We already do this with the juvenile detention facilities in Lusk – a judge has to
ensure that there is a place available before they send a juvenile to Trinity House or
Oberstown House. Of course, politically this would be unacceptable. I think the public
should be made aware that the vast majority of people who commit crimes are living in their
midst, unbeknownst to them. Most crimes remain unsolved, those who have committed them
have not been detected; others are awaiting a court date, or have not been convicted or have
been released from serving their sentence. The focus on people in prison is shortsighted in
the extreme.
Homelessness
A disproportionate percentage of people in prison were homeless prior to imprisonment
and will be homeless again on release. If you are in court and homeless, you will almost
invariably be remanded in custody. I presume the thinking behind this is that without an
address, the Gardai may not know where to find you, should they need to do so. In reality,
however, it is far easier for the Gardai to find a homeless person than to find many of those
who give an address, real or imaginary.
Again, on conviction, homeless people are much more likely to be imprisoned than
someone who has an address. And they will not be eligible for early release, no matter how
constructively they have spent their time in prison.
Every time I visit a prison, I will be approached by a number of people asking me if I
would have accommodation for them. Some are on remand but have been given bail by the
courts; the only thing holding them in custody is the lack of an address. Others are coming to
the end of their sentence, have been approved by the Irish Prison Service for early release but
will not be released because they have nowhere to live when they get out. I would guestimate
that at any one time there are up to 50 people in prison because there is no accommodation
available within the community. They should not be there. Given the inherent damage that
imprisonment does to a person, it seems to me to be unjust and immoral to send someone to
prison, or to hold someone in prison, because society is unable or unwilling to provide them
with their basic right to a place to live.
Education and Training
As everyone knows and multiple reports have highlighted, the profile of most
prisoners is of people who left school early, have low levels of literacy, have no
qualifications, have never worked, come from areas of multiple deprivation and sometimes
seriously dysfunctional families. Training and education should be at the centre of prison
life. To put them at the centre of our prison system is a matter of justice, as many of those in
prison have been previously failed by all the structures and systems in our society. They
have been failed by the educational system, sometimes failed by the child care system, failed
by the inadequacy of addiction services, failed by the services which should provide access to
employment or training for employment. The value of training and education services in
prison cannot be assessed exclusively in terms of their impact on recidivism. Training and
education should be at the centre of prison life because society has an obligation to
compensate for its failures at an earlier stage of many prisoners’ lives.
In many of our prisons, the training and education services are excellent. But very
inadequate. Their availability to prisoners is limited, leaving many prisoners with little to do
but walk around a yard or play pool. Frequently the training workshops operate at a reduced
capacity, as there may be insufficient prison instructors available. If there is a shortage of
staff due to sickness or absenteeism, the workshops are the first to be closed, to free up prison
instructors for the task of maintaining security within the prison. Due to the embargo on
recruitment, if a training officer leaves the prison service, they cannot be replaced and a
workshop, which once had two instructors and eighteen prisoners, may now find itself
reduced to one prison instructor and nine prisoners. The educational services fortunately do
not suffer from the same problem, as they are staffed by the Education and Training Boards.
While everyone emphasises, in theory, the importance of training workshops, in reality they
are an optional add-on, as staff and resources allow. Justice requires training and education
to be at the centre of prison life.
Mental Health
Some people in prison whom I meet are seriously mentally disturbed. I visit one
young man who believes that aliens have taken over the world, that he has been poisoned
with radioactive material, that he is a qualified doctor and many more delusions. He is
totally insane. Unfortunately, the mental health services in Ireland, if you are poor, are so
abysmal that he is unable to access adequate care outside of prison. He is given some respite
care in his local psychiatric hospital from time to time, but is released again after a week or
two, a decision which may often be made, not on medical grounds, but on the basis that his
bed is needed for someone else. He is regularly arrested on minor public order offences, but
he invariably forgets to turn up in court and ends up remanded in custody.
The percentage of the prison population with mental health problems is far greater than
the percentage within the community. Some of our prisons have developed a far better
mental health service than exists in the community and indeed the High Dependency Unit in
Mountjoy prison has been given awards. However, most prisoners with mental health
problems shouldn’t be in prison as they pose no threat to anyone. Given the inadequacy of
mental health services within the community, the Courts simply don’t know what else to do
with them.
Addiction
A large majority of prisoners whom I encounter have an addiction problem. They are in
prison because of their addiction. I can access a residential drug treatment centre for some
prisoners, with the consent of the court if they are on remand, or with the cooperation of the
Irish Prison Service if they are near the end of their sentence. Our own organisation runs
several day programmes. At present I have over 50 prisoners who are meeting me regularly
during my weekends in prison seeking a place either on the day programme or in the
residential programme. While a small proportion might request a place as a “get out of jail”
card, a far greater proportion come to me and tell me that they already have bail, but they
don’t want to take up that bail until a place becomes available to them in a treatment
programme. They say that if they get out without getting help, they will simply revert back
to their drug-using lifestyle and end up back in prison within a short period of time as many
do; I regularly meet people on remand who had been released several weeks earlier from a
prison sentence. Without access to treatment, the “revolving door” image is applicable to
many of those in prison with an addiction. Unless they get the help they need, they return
again and again to prison with regular predictability.
Perhaps the single biggest contribution which the prison service could make to the
reduction of recidivism is to provide a custodial treatment centre, as envisaged under the
Misuse of Drugs Act 1977. That Act allows a judge to detain a person in a custodial
treatment centre, as an alternative to imprisonment, and, on completion of the treatment
programme, the person can be dealt with a non-custodial sentence. 37 years later, no such
custodial treatment centre exists. Such a treatment centre would provide both the intensive
therapy and educational inputs that a successful programme would provide. It would be
linked to an aftercare programme in the community, and where appropriate, drug free
residential accommodation, probably run by a voluntary organisation. Most of those I know
who are addicted and facing criminal charges would jump at the opportunity to go to such a
treatment programme.
Recidivism
In my experience with prisoners being released, recidivism is dependent, not so much on
what happens within prison, as to what happens in the first few weeks and months after
release. You could have the best training and educational services within prison, but if a
person is released into homelessness, or into the same dysfunctional family that they lived
with before going into prison, into the same drug fuelled community they came from, back to
the same negative peer group, with €5 in their pocket, no medical card, nothing to do all day
long – as happens to many of the people I work with - how can we expect them not to reoffend? If a person is in the care of the State for maybe twelve months or even several years,
the State provides them with accommodation, substantial meals, medical care and possibly
good education or training programmes during all that time, at enormous expense. Why can
we not expect the State to ensure that on leaving prison, those basic needs continue to be
met? One young man I knew, who had a serious mental health problem, was getting his
medication while in prison. On release, he had no medical card, was unable to access his
medication, and within six weeks was dead. You would expect people being released from
prison to be elated! Many of those I meet who have just been released are seriously
depressed. They face the prospect of sleeping at night on the street, they have no money to
buy food or cigarettes, they have to walk the streets all day long. The threat of being sent
back to prison for re-offending is not only no deterrent, but after a couple of days of so-called
“freedom”, seems positively attractive.
Last November, I had a letter from a young man I know who was in prison in England.
He told me that he was due for release in three months time. His accommodation on release
was already arranged, two weeks rent had been paid, he would receive two weeks welfare
payments on release and a place in a training programme in the community had been
organised for him. I’m sure that is not the norm in England, but why should that not be the
norm in Ireland with a much smaller prison population
Many people going to prison have multiple problems. In the community, they are on
long waiting lists for multiple services. The irony is that prison is the only one-stop shop
available to them where many of their needs will be addressed. There they will get
accommodation, three meals a day, their medical needs will be looked after, and they have no
financial headaches. No-one wants to be in prison, but I know a small number of people who
choose to go to prison because they are homeless and cannot access accommodation, or
addicted and cannot access treatment in the community, or simply cannot cope with the
stresses of life in the community. The way they engineer that is to get arrested on a minor
public order offence, take a warrant and then when life gets too demanding hand themselves
in on their warrant. Sometimes the Gardai couldn’t be bothered executing the warrant,
maybe it’s close to the end of their shift and they want to get home early, and then the person
gets very annoyed and frustrated that they can’t even get arrested and sent to prison.
Indeed prison is the only State service available to the poor for which there is no waiting
list.
Summary
Given the damage that prison does to people who are already very damaged, it should
be used only as a last resort. We pay lip service to that idea of prison as a last resort. Instead
prison is often used to deal with people whose problems society is unwilling or unable to
address. In doing so, we further damage them and society.