Director’s Blog
Hopeful for Change in 2012
January 11th, 2012
While there are a lot of causes to be pessimistic about the economic situation the State is in, and the pressure on public and community services, at IPRT we are hopeful and optimistic that 2012 is going to be a historic year for turning around the Irish prison system. The prison population is leveling off; the Government has announced the establishment of a Strategic Review Group in penal policy; and with the plans for Thornton shelved, the Prison Service can shift its focus to improving the existing prison stock. With leadership and political will, we believe that Ireland can begin to move from the failed policy of expansion to developing a more effective and focused prison system – and that there can be very significant, positive changes over the coming 12 months.
Prison Population
Last year saw the numbers in prison custody begin to level out after decades of penal expansion. From a peak of 4,587 in April 2011, the prison population remained at around 4,250 for the last 6 months of 2011. Coming after double-digit increases every year for the past decade, this is highly significant.
IPRT believes that 2012 could be the first year since the 1960s when the prison population is reduced year on year. If we are serious about reducing and keeping the prison population down, we need to focus on a number of areas:
- The Fines Act and the system of payment by instalment has to be finally implemented in 2012 and this should see an immediate reduction in imprisonment for fine default. Similarly, the use of Community Service as an alternative to prison must continue to be expanded, and there have been promising signs in the last year of the capacity of the Probation Service to take more people under community supervision.
- There must also be a proper review of our mandatory sentencing policies, particularly around drugs. In the next couple of weeks, the Law Reform Commission will publish a consultation paper on this topic, and we believe that there is a new political willingness to look at what has been a disastrous drugs policy in Ireland over the past two decades.
- Finally, the main priority for IPRT in the area of sentencing in 2012 will be on parole reform. An Oireachtas sub-Committee has been established to examine ways for the safe early release of prisoners in a structured and regulated manner. We will be working closely with the Oireachtas Committee and with Government to come up with proposals for a fair and just system of parole, temporary release and remission.
As we set out in our submission to the Thornton Hall Review Group, we are convinced that with steady progress in each of these three areas, we can reduce the prison population significantly over the next few years.
Prison Conditions
Some progress on slopping out in the C-block at Mountjoy has been followed up with the allocation of funds for expanding that work to include the B-block in 2012. We are now at a point where the prison service should shortly be able to give us a final date for the abolition of slopping out in the prison system.
There has also been a gradual acceptance of the Inspector of Prisons’ guidance on the real capacity – as opposed to the bed capacity – of the fourteen prisons in the State. The targets for reducing overcrowding are now clear, and we will be pushing Government to set out plans to meet those targets.
In any plan for the redevelopment of the prison system, IPRT will continue to demand that priority is given to addressing conditions in our worst prisons – Mountjoy, Limerick and particularly Cork – where the situation of slopping out, overcrowding and poor cell conditions is urgent.
Recent attention on the Dóchas Centre should also mean that misguided plans for dormitory accommodation are revisited, and 2012 is the year in which the government can finally accept our recommendation for a more wide-ranging review towards women offenders, moving towards alternatives to imprisonment for women.
Accountability
Underpinning any programme of reform must be improved accountability. Recently, the need for a Prisoner Ombudsman has been raised again in the context of the tragic death of a prisoner at Cloverhill Prison. We believe that the case for an Ombudsman is stronger than ever; that a Prisoner Ombudsman would be a cheap and effective way of underpinning real accountability within the Prison system; and IPRT will be bringing forward proposals in the early part of this year for how the issue of an independent complaints’ system for prisoners can finally be addressed.
There are already some signs of movement on improving the internal complaints system within the Prison Service and reform of the Prisons Visiting Committees. A further essential element in 2012 would be for Ireland to ratify the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture (OP-CAT) which will strengthen the inspection systems within our prisons and other places of detention.
Youth Justice
Finally, in Youth Justice, the focus is now firmly on ending the detention of children in St. Patrick’s Institution. IPRT is working with a strong alliance of children’s rights groups to apply maximum pressure on both the Minister for Justice and the Minister for Children on this issue. It is a disgrace that during the boom years, this vulnerable group of children continued to be neglected by successive Irish Governments – but we are confident that with the transfer of responsibility for young people in the criminal justice system to the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, a solution to this clear human rights violation is now moving closer.
Keeping the numbers down; addressing the key human rights issues in the prisons; strengthening accountability; and ending the detention of children in St. Patrick’s. None of these goals need cost the earth – in fact most of them would save exchequer funds. What they do need is leadership and commitment at Government level. Surely not too much to ask for 2012?
Thejournal.ie: Long jail terms don’t work in tackling crime
December 12th, 2011
Liam Herrick discusses what works in tackling crime and making society safer on thejournal.ie:
"Over the past twenty years (possibly even longer) there has been a destructive drift towards ‘common sense’ and posturing policies on crime, and away from cold evidence of what actually works in making communities safer. The growth of our prison system – which has doubled in size in the last 14 years – is just one symptom of this problem, but more widely the tone of justice policy discussion started to deteriorate from the moment John O’Donoghue, then Minister for Justice, started to talk about “zero tolerance” in the mid-1990s.
From that point, being seen to be tough on crime became more important than actually focusing on what was likely to work in reducing crime. In a time of prosperity, with an apparent surplus of public funds with which to play populist politics, successive Governments ploughed ahead with prison expansion – and with putting in place the laws and policies to fill those prisons."
Read the column in full on thejournal.ie here: Long jail terms don’t work in tackling crime – no matter what ‘common sense’ says
Strip Searches at Dóchas
November 23rd, 2011
Last night, the Minister for Justice made a
comprehensive statement in the Dáil about the shocking annual report of the Dóchas Centre
Visiting Committee, published last Friday (18th Nov 2011). While
the Minister reiterated the position of the Irish Prison Service that no women
were strip searched in front of male officers, he did accept that what had
happened in a strip search in November 2010, as recounted in the Visiting Committee
report, was unacceptable and that instructions had been issued to staff about
any future searches. The Minister also acknowledged that the manner in which another
woman prisoner had been ejected from the prison was “entirely unacceptable”.
While the Minister’s clarity on both of these violations of rights is very welcome, a number of important issues remain outstanding:
1. Transparency and Accountability
This controversy has only come to light because of the publication of the Visiting Committee’s Report, a full year after the incident took place (on 9th Nov 2010). We do not know if any complaints were made by prisoners about these incidents, but given that the current internal complaints system lacks any real credibility, it is quite possible that no prisoner made a formal complaint. This incident emphasises once again - and most emphatically - the need for proper accountability and an independent complaints system within the prison system, such as the effective Prison Ombudsman models in England and Wales, Scotland and in Northern Ireland.
Even though the Minister has now issued a full statement on what happened at the Dóchas Centre, we remain unaware of any staff or management being held to account, and we still do not know who ordered this search and/or who oversaw the search being conducted in this manner. The Government has plans to strengthen the Visiting Committee model, by bringing them under the Inspector of Prisons, and this seems like a good time to do so.
2. Deterioration of Dóchas Regime
The Visiting Committee Report also indicated a much deeper problem within the Dóchas Centre, reflecting a change in ethos and regime within the prison away from one that is primarily rehabilitative. The change to a more punitive regime is a pattern that has been witnessed by many professionals and agencies working in the prison over the last number of years. Where once the Dóchas Centre was a model of a successful women’s prison, put forward internationally as an example of best practice, now it seems that much of this progress has been lost.The Minister needs to seriously examine what is happening at Dóchas – and an internal review of these recent reports by prison management is not an effective way to get to the root of this change in culture.
3. More Effective Responses
This is also an appropriate time to reflect on where we are going with the imprisonment of women in Ireland more generally. The deterioration of the regime in the Dóchas Centre is undoubtedly linked to the exceptional levels of overcrowding in that prison over recent years, and more importantly, the very significant increase in the number of women who have been imprisoned over that period. (There has been an increase of more than 87% in the numbers of women sentenced to imprisonment since 2005, and a 19% increase in 2010 on 2009 numbers.)
In December 2009, the Women in Prison Reform Alliance made a submission to then Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern calling for a full review of criminal justice policy towards women offenders in Ireland, which would look at alternatives to imprisonment and provision of open and alternative residential facilities for women offenders. In Ireland, we only have a medium security prison response to women offenders, even though internationally women are recognised posing far lower risk than male prisoners. Many good models exist for residential and therapeutic alternatives to prison for women; such programmes are cheaper, more effective and more capable of addressing the fact that a large proportion of women’s offending is linked to underlying causes such as mental health, addiction and experiences of abuse.
- IPRT Briefing on Women in Detention
- Inspector of Prisons: Women Prisoners' Supplement to Standards
- Revolving Doors: Counting the Cost
- Prison Reform Trust: Reforming Women’s Justice
Momentum building against s. 15A
October 24th, 2011
In today’s Irish Times law pages, Carol Coulter presents valuable and interesting analysis of two recent Court of Criminal Appeal decisions on sentencing in drug cases (prosecutions under section 15a of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977 as amended). IPRT’s Research and Policy Officer Jane Mulcahy has already carried out a similar analysis on these cases in the prison law bulletin sent to prison lawyers last Friday. These decisions demonstrate once again the difficulties surrounding Irish sentencing law in this area.
Very significantly, just yesterday the outgoing Director of Public Prosecutions, James Hamilton gave a lengthy interview with The Sunday Business Post [‘The Prosecution Rests’ by John Burke, 23rd Oct 2011] where he also voiced his scepticism about section 15a of the Misuse of Drugs Act.
Opposition to mandatory sentencing has been a key concern of IPRT’s work over many years. The first priority for us was to resist any further extension of the type of law introduced in the late 90s and the early part of the last decade. A second phase was to convince members of all political parties of the problems associated with mandatory and presumptive sentencing – this has been achieved in the Programme for Government and in his recent IPRT Annual Lecture, Minister Shatter referred to international research on the wastefulness of mandatory sentencing.
So now we have the Director of Public Prosecutions, the legal professions, several members of the judiciary, international evidence and IPRT all stacked up against the current legislative framework, and the current Government committed to reviewing the law in this area. The Law Reform Commission is due to publish a consultation paper on mandatory sentencing shortly, and IPRT is now planning the next phase in our campaigning work against this harmful and wasteful law. During the next month, we will be publishing a discussion document on drugs policy which will show that, as the DPP has suggested, the impact of the law to date has been to fill our prisons with low level operatives in the drug trade.
It is time to end this legal and social travesty.
What would you do if you were President?
October 12th, 2011
This morning I attended the Barnardos' Presidential Debate – which turned out to be a fascinating and exciting morning (much better than the RTÉ and TV3 debates!) I went along partly to raise the issue of children still being detained in adult prison and those children in St. Patrick's Institution also being excluded from the complaints remit of the Ombudsman for Children. As it turned out I didn’t have to – the first question Olivia O’Leary directed to the panel was what they would do as President on the issue. The answers were encouraging and enlightening.
Michael D Higgins, who was only candidate to have raised the position of St. Patrick's in his introductory remarks, said he would make a priority of visiting children in prison to highlight the issue.
Gay Mitchell said that he believed the President had a constitutional power to bring forward reports on key issues, and while he had identified suicide as his first priority, he was open to also issuing further reports in issues such as the detention of children.
Martin McGuinness responded to the question by referring more generally to the issue of vulnerable groups of children in society and his record in highlighting their rights and needs. He also spoke about his particular commitment to listening to the voice of children in developing policy.
Mary Davis made a point of stating that she had visited prisons – at which point all of the other candidates pointed out that they too had visited prisons.
David Norris linked the issue to the impact of bullying on children and how this can cause some to be drawn into the justice system.
Sean Gallagher referred to his specific experience of working with children detained at the former detention centre at Finglas and their famiilies.
Dana was not present.
The overall debate was very stimulating and addressed a number of key issues including the proposed constitutional referendum on children rights, integration policy towards immigrant children, the impact of alcohol and drugs on children and specifically the impact of alcohol advertising, child protection and mental health. From an IPRT perspective, to see the ongoing use of St. Patrick's Institution to imprison boys aged 16 and 17 put centre-stage in the debate was highly significant, and further encourages us to make a final push to get Government to commit the resources to ensure the transfer of those boys held there to child detention schools as soon as possible.
Advocates for the death penalty in Europe are now an exotic breed
September 29th, 2011
The intense coverage last week of the tragic execution of Troy Davis highlights once again how far apart European and American values on crime and punishment have moved. Apart from the grave concerns about the safety of his conviction and the real possibility that an innocent man was being killed by the State, the barbaric cycle of death-row reprieves which ultimately led up to his death was horrific to witness. This process of perpetual threats of execution points to the irreconcilable tension between a judicial system based on the concept of reasonable doubt which is also committed to imposing the ultimate punishment. Troy’s case also shows once again the wisdom of the European Court of Human Rights in the Soering judgment back in 1989, where it found the death-row process itself (quite apart from the death penalty issue) to constitute torture.
At the moment, there is a lot for Europeans to be self-critical about in terms of how we run our societies – but the strong consensus against the death penalty which culminated in universal abolition across Europe is one of the great human rights advances of recent decades. Except for the occasional ranting of the Daily Mail in Britain, advocates for the death penalty in Europe are now an exotic and declining breed. As with issues such as gun regulation, a chasm has opened up between attitudes on both sides of the Atlantic.
In that context, it’s worth remembering the similarly huge gulf in prison policy that has existed until recently between the US and most of Europe. US prison policy is a social disaster on an unprecedented scale which is now profoundly affecting the financial capacity of some States to function normally. As with the death penalty, there is now a movement in many States away from the punitive and destructive past with death penalty bans and prison reduction strategies emerging across the country.
One of the main reasons is the different attitudes we have to prisons as a social or as a commercial enterprise. Recent evidence now suggests that the for-profit nature of private American prisons has played a part in the prison boom of the 1990s.
Given all of the above, it begs the question why some Irish and British journalists and politicians still so regularly turn to the US as a law and order utopia to be mimicked in areas such as sentencing and prison management. Especially now that many US states are beginning to realise the error of their ways.
Tragic snapshot of the reality of imprisonment for vulnerable young people
June 23rd, 2011
The Prisoner Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, Pauline McCabe, recently published her report into the death of 19-year-old Allyn Baxter, who died by suicide while in the custody of Hydebank Wood Prison and Young Offender’s Centre on 3rd August, 2010. In her report, the Prisoner Ombudsman makes very clear statements against 22-hr lock up for young prisoners: "Long periods of lockdown, in my view, do nothing to address offending behaviour and are the enemy of the vulnerable."
This case from Northern ireland is an almost unspeakably sad snapshot of the reality of imprisonment for vulnerable young people. Allyn Baxter suffered a tragic childhood with the loss of his mother at a very young age and unstable care during his childhood - factors which we can assume contributed to a growing problem with alcohol, drugs and self-harm during his adolescence.
Detained in early June 2010 for six days for not paying a fine related to a tv licence when he was just 19, he stated he would kill himself if ever imprisoned again. He overdosed three times over the following weeks and was again imprisoned at the end of July following a public order incident.
In a forensic analysis of everything that happened over the following days while at Hydebank, the NI Prisoner Ombudsman focussed on the deterioration of Allyn’s state of mind when subjected to extensive lock-up times on the fourth and fifth day in prison; the Ombudsman also linked Allyn Baxter’s death to other deaths during the first days of detention. Familiar failings in the management of medical records and appropriate weighting of risks for vulnerable prisoners were identified, and one is left with a truly depressing story of a young man who suffered from a complex set of problems, but whose death could have been avoided.
What is also striking about this tragic case, is that the NI Prisoner Ombudsman has provided a comprehensive report examining all aspects of this case, and making detailed recommendations, within a year of the death occurring: this stands in particularly sharp contrast to the appalling delays in investigating deaths in prison here. If ever there was a case to prove the value of a prisoner ombudsman body to investigate such deaths, then the tragic story of Allyn Baxter is that.
Read more:
- Press release: Investigation Report into the Death In Custody of Allyn Baxter
- Prisoner Ombudsman for Northern Ireland: Death in Custody Report - Allyn Baxter
The case for reform of responses to women's offending - an Intern's Perspective
June 20th, 2011
We are all aware of the many issues that face those who come into contact with the criminal justice system. While the majority of prisoners in Ireland and the UK are men, women’s issues receive considerably less attention than those of the mainstream prison population. The number of women in prison in the UK has risen by 114% in the last 15 years according to a new report from the Prison Reform Trust, Reforming Women’s Justice. The report emphasizes the importance of reform in women’s justice. Often women’s issues can be better addressed through service provision rather than a prison sentence.
Personally, women offenders’ issues were not an area that I had read about or was familiar with until recently. However, this report is an innovative proposal to reforming the way we look at criminal behaviour and also includes a proposed multi-dimensional process of interlinking services concerned primarily with women’s justice.
The report details that the reasons behind women’s’ offending behaviour are ingrained in social and personal problems which have a profound affect on their wider social and family circumstances. For women, offending is not a one-dimensional phenomenon. It is an issue which can largely be explained through their socio-economic background and personal history. For instance, this research reports that many women in the criminal justice system have been victims of sexual assault, subjected to abuse, have experienced domestic violence, and that a high proportion of foreign national female prisoners have been victims of trafficking. This all tallies with initial findings of a similar, Ireland-based research study being carried out by researchers in Trinity College, Dublin entitled Homeless women and Incarceration. Those preliminary finding, reported in The Irish Examiner, found that a significant percentage of women in prison had suffered from mental health problems and had experienced intimate partner violence.
Of further concern is that children become victims through parents’ incarceration. The rise in female imprisonment means that more children than ever are living separated from their mothers. Often they will be placed in care or with a member of their extended family. Only 5% of children remain in the family home while their mother is in custody.
When you consider that children who are separated from their mothers are more likely to offend, or experience mental health problems, the impact of women’s incarceration is multiplied further.
As an extension to this problem, women continue to struggle when they are released from prison. This lack of stability is detrimental to regaining custody of their children, and the report states that they are more unlikely to secure accommodation if their children are not living with them.
Reforming Women’s Justice recommends that women’s prisons be made redundant, and for funds to instead be directed towards women’s centres based in community settings. It emphasises that while crime should be punished, it should be proportionate and rehabilitative. It should allow women to access essential services for their successful rehabilitation and address their behavioural problems.
The report further recommends for a designated woman’s justice agency to be appointed to oversee the co-ordination of women’s services and to ensure that all justice agencies, including the police, probation and prisons, are appropriately resourced to deal with women’s offending.
Currently, women make up 3.9% of the prison population in Ireland. While this number is relatively small, women’s facilities are seriously overcrowded which is undermining the ability of prison staff to deliver rehabilitative regimes for women. The Inspector of Prisons recently criticised the lack of pre-release programmes for female prisoners especially in regard to health, and welfare information. Women are detained in medium security prisons when open type facilities would be much more appropriate for their needs, especially since a large number are serving short sentences.
Overall, this new report demonstrates how the approach to women’s offending can be more successfully balanced according to their care needs. While imprisonment is sometimes necessary, it does not mean that the underlying reasons for women’s behaviour should continue to go on ignored.
Maggie Coughlan - IPRT Intern
Read the full report Reforming Women's Justice
#CRISISJAM: Crime and Crisis in Three Easy Election Clichés
February 25th, 2011
Liam Herrick discusses budgets and looming crises on #CRISISJAM:
"Structural economic inequality is the elephant in the room when it comes to projecting future crime levels. If we take the view that levels of crime in society are determined largely by the inequality in that society (a view which forms a central part of the thesis put forward in The Spirit Level), then we are faced with the uncomfortable truth that in an unfair recession, the economic opportunity offered by involvement in crime will make offending an ever more attractive choice for young men and women. (The failed response of the State to the trade in illegal drugs is only the most obvious sign of this trend.)
"The next Government has a choice: continue to waste resources on punitive responses to what are, at core, complex social issues – or take the once-in-a-century opportunity which now presents itself to radically rethink our responses to both criminal justice and social injustice, to make a better and safer society for all."
Read the #CRISISJAM entry in full here: Crime and Crisis in Three Easy Election Clichés
Devastating report - and still a denial of the level of the problem
February 11th, 2011
As IPRT members and friends will be aware, this week saw the publication of perhaps the most damning report yet on our prison system from the Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture. The report presents a forensic and devastating account of violence, overcrowding, unhygienic cell conditions, grossly inadequate healthcare and a lack of accountability for staff accused of mistreatment of prisoners.
In the context of this damning account of a failure by the Irish authorities to address the problems in our prison system over an 18 year period (this is the fifth report by this committee since 1993), it is disappointing that the Prison Service would choose to respond by underplaying the level of the problems in the system.
IPRT has consistently stated that efforts being taken by the Irish Prison Service to address the issues cannot succeed unless Government take control of the overcrowding situation; the overcrowding frustrates any attempts to tackle the serious problems outlined in this report.
It is worth recalling the CPT’s first report on Ireland, published in 1995, refers to the then Government “Five Year Prison Plan”, which would prioritise the ending of slopping out. Today, 16 years later, all (close to 300) prisoners in Cork prison still slop out; around 500 in Mountjoy; 50 at the Training Unit and 100 in Limerick to a total of 1,000 prisoners – more or less the same number as in the early 1990s. The fact that new prison buildings which were put in place over the past twenty years have in-cell sanitation is not something to celebrate; the fact that pilot schemes for camping toilets have been started in Mountjoy in recent months is not a cause for celebration either.
IPRT fully acknowledges the work of the Irish Prison Service in the management of many of our newer prisons, where constructive regimes and modern cell-conditions provide a constructive prison environment for prisoners, and where most international standards for detention are being met.
However, over the last 18 years, Government attitude to international and domestic reports on our prison system has been to delay publication of reports, or to deny the level of problems, to blame external factors, and to ask the public to accept that new buildings will solve the problems within the system. The Prison System is like any other area of Irish public life: the only way to solve the problem is to acknowledge the level and nature of the problem and take it on.
This report is shocking by any standards. We sincerely hope that the next Government will finally grasp that nettle and if it does so it will have our sincere support.
Read more:
- The Irish Times: 'Prison chief rejects European criticism of Irish jails'
- The Irish Emigrant: 'European body critical of Irish prison regime'
- Irish Examiner: 'Call for Dáil debate on prisons report'