Ivana Bacik

Government Motion - 29/05/08

Senator Ivana Bacik: I welcome the Minister of State and the opportunity to speak on this issue. I have had a long-standing interest in prison reform and have long been a member of the Irish Penal Reform Trust. I am very familiar with the inside of many of the State’s prisons, happily not as a prisoner but as a defence lawyer and criminologist. I spent time touring the inside of Mountjoy Prison, the Dóchas Centre and other prisons. I have been in the cells in Mountjoy Prison and the room in the Dóchas Centre. I have some familiarity with the system as a consequence.

We must all welcome that there will be a significant improvement in conditions for male prisoners when they move from Mountjoy Prison to the new prison. Nobody can stand over the appalling conditions male prisoners are currently subjected to in Mountjoy Prison, where they are still, in 2008, slopping out. This involves urinating and defecating into buckets. Allowing this is an appalling practice. The Government should be very ashamed that, after 11 years in power, there is still no in-cell sanitation for the majority of prisoners in Mountjoy.

I hope there will be enhanced rehabilitation facilities in the new prison. It is welcome to hear the Minister of State speak in favour of greater rehabilitation facilities, but this does not ring true when one considers the quiet winding down of the CONNECT project, an innovative rehabilitation programme to which money had been allocated. However, it is apparent that it has not been spent and the project is no longer up and running. What is the Minister of State’s proposal in regard to the project?

While it is to be hoped that conditions will improve when the new prison is built, it is regrettable that there will be an increase in both the size and capacity of the prison by comparison with Mountjoy Prison. It is to be regretted that what should be an urban or city-centre prison is moving to a greenfield site. We have debated this but I must reiterate my concerns in this regard.

I am particularly concerned about the capacity of the prison. The Minister of State said there will be a total of 1,400 prisoners on the site but the motion refers to 2,200. We therefore require clarification.

I am particularly concerned, therefore, that we are allowing for a potentially enormous increase in prisoner numbers to 2,200. The unfortunate truism is that if prison places are built, they will be filled. We should all be concerned about the direction this would take our penal policy. It would be a question of simply warehousing prisoners in large numbers, as other Senators have stated.

The location of the prison could lead to stigmatisation, particularly of children of prisoners, who are to be taken to Thornton Hall on a special prison bus. This is of real concern and we must consider other ways of ensuring access links for people travelling from the inner city. The reality is that many visitors will be travelling from there.

I was fortunate enough to see plans for the redevelopment of Mountjoy Prison, which were at a very advanced stage under Deputy John O’Donoghue, a former Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform. They were so advanced that there was even a scale model provided of what the redeveloped prison would look like. It was along the lines of the Dóchas Centre. I understand these plans were abandoned and that a greenfield site was proposed. What was the rationale behind the abandonment of those plans?

That debate is over and it now appears that the prison at Thornton Hall is to be built, although some have raised concerns about whether the public private partnership will go ahead. If it is to go ahead, I would like to see two aspects in particular changed. The proposal that the Central Mental Hospital be located at the site should be abandoned. It is not in the body of the motion before the House but the “Patients not Prisoners” report, launched earlier this week, raised very serious concerns over moving psychiatric patients to a penal site designed for a prison. This is of real concern.

In respect of my second concern, I have been working with a colleague from the other House who is not unknown to the Minister of State, namely, Deputy Mary O’Rourke. She and I hosted a meeting last week with Baroness Jean Corston from the House of Lords, who has produced a comprehensive and thought-provoking report, “The Corston Report”, on female prisoners in the United Kingdom, the recommendations of which have largely been taken up by the British Government.

The Corston report recommends that prison is not appropriate for the majority of women offenders and I expect the report would have the same application in Ireland. Research here has shown the majority of our female offenders are non-violent. They are committed for minor offences and for short terms of imprisonment. At present, approximately 100 women are in prison in Ireland on any given day. The Thornton Hall development effectively proposes to double this with its provision of 170 places and apparently a further 40 places are to be provided in Cork Prison. This is a most regressive step, which will ensure not the rehabilitation, but the warehousing of women. Such women are among the most vulnerable of our prison population and include those who have severe mental health problems and many who have addiction problems. I again stress the majority of them pose no risk to society because they are non-violent.

Research has shown that at present, women in our prisons have an average of two to three children each. Although as I noted earlier, 100 are in prison on any given day, the numbers for committal in any year are striking. A total of 960 women were committed to prison in 2006. This represents 2,000 to 3,000 children who were left motherless in 2006. Even if this was for a brief time, Baroness Corston has observed it can lead to the women losing their homes and the placing of their children into care. There is an enormous cost to those children, their mothers and to society when one considers the cost of the alternative care, the emotional and social cost and so forth.

As I noted, prison places that are built are filled. If 170 places for women are built on this proposed site, they will be filled and increasing numbers of women will go to prison for minor offences that should require punishment in the community. Instead, we should see a development of community service orders. Ireland should go down the road British penal policy is taking on foot of the Corston report and should consider alternatives for this vulnerable group of offenders.

I emphasise that although plans for Thornton Hall are advanced and the prison development is proceeding, there still is room for manoeuvre regarding the groups that are to be moved there, as well as the site’s composition. The Government should give serious consideration to not moving the Dóchas centre there. The Dóchas centre is less than ten years old. It was built on rehabilitative lines and provides all the prison places required. These women are damaged and not damaging and do not deserve to be expanded in number. I apologise to the Cathaoirleach for exceeding my allotted time.

Committee Debate  - 17/05/2008

Senator Ivana Bacik:  I was going to ask the same question as Deputy Naughten so perhaps I will ask it again. The issue of whether persons can be detained with regard to immigration matters is unclear in the context of Thornton Hall. Is there provision for the detention of people in a particular block under immigration legislation? If so, will women and men be separated in that block?

Is there agreement that Mountjoy must go? We all welcome the Minister’s commitment to improve on the dreadful, appalling and substandard accommodation currently in Mountjoy. However, under the former Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy John O’Donoghue, the Office of Public Works, OPW, had developed an extensive set of plans, including an architect’s scale model, for the redevelopment of the Mountjoy site. Why has this been abandoned and what was the cost? As the OPW was behind these plans for redeveloping Mountjoy along the lines of Dóchas, why is it not involved in the design of Thornton Hall? We have already heard, in response to Deputy Rabbitte’s question, that the OPW will not be involved and this is a real concern.

There are real concerns about the size of the prison. The role of the courts is to sentence but the legislature and executive have a role in prison policy and building prison places. We know from international experience that when places are built they will be filled through sentencing. Given comments by members of the Government on the courts not being harsh enough in sentencing in the past, there are valid concerns that building a super prison of this size will lead to an increase in the number of people imprisoned. My question relates to the maximum number of 2,200 places. In the Minister’s speech he stated it was envisaged that only 1,400 places would be filled but that for emergency purposes there would be an overall capacity of 2,200. What will trigger this doubling up within cells, given that best practice is to have single occupancy cells?

On the matter of the women’s prison at the Dóchas centre, which has already been raised by my colleagues, the Minister will be aware that Deputy O’Rourke and I chaired a seminar at the Oireachtas with Baroness Jean Corston, author of a major report in Britain last year on the sentencing of women. Baroness Corston established that women should not be imprisoned unless for crimes of violence. We know that only 8% of women committed under sentence in 2006 in Ireland - that is, 35 women - were committed for offences against the person. In that year there were 289 committals of women under immigration legislation. Most of the women who are currently in prison at the centre are on short-term sentences or on remand for immigration-related offences and not, in the majority of cases, for violent offences. Given that we know from previous studies that these women have an average of two to three children each, that makes 2,000 to 3,000 children in Ireland who are left motherless for a number of days, nights, weeks or months. I remind the Minister that best practice is to reduce significantly the imprisonment of women. Unfortunately, with this plan the imprisonment of women will increase significantly.

I dispute some of the Minister’s figures on overcrowding in the Dóchas centre. The figure of 105 or 106 women which is usually given tends to include 20 women in prison in Limerick. I do not dispute that there are sometimes more than 100 women in the centre, but my point is that they should not be there in the first place.

With regard to planning issues, the residents have raised some serious concerns. One issue, which was mentioned in Senator O’Toole’s submission, is the height of the wall at 7 m. The height of the wall is of real concern to those of us with an interest in prison policy, quite apart from the local residents, who clearly have an issue with it. There appears to be no reason a wall of this height needs to be built given that, as Senator O’Toole said, the Berlin Wall was only 4 m in height. As the wall is planned to be approximately 7 m in height, it could actually be higher than that. Can this wall not be reduced in height?

Road access has been a major issue, as has the lack of public transport. Those involved in the provision of services to prisoners and their families at present have a real concern that the designated bus described by the Minister, which will be supplied to enable people to travel from the city centre to the prison, will inevitably stigmatise those, especially children, who will have to travel on it to visit family members imprisoned in Thornton Hall. Can there be a way of ensuring better public access to the prison without this stigmatising bus? With colleagues in Trinity College I conducted a survey in 1998 on crime in Ireland which established that the majority of people sent to Mountjoy Prison after being sentenced in Dublin courts come from a number of streets in the Dublin inner city area. These are largely the people who will be housed in Thornton Hall. It may only be ten miles out of the city centre, but that is a very difficult ten miles to travel without access to private transport. Thus, I ask about plans for access to the prison.

I am grateful for the Minister’s comments on restorative justice and rehabilitation. It is important that there be a commitment to rehabilitation and to increasing the use of non-custodial sanctions.