Overcrowded prisons - One ray of hope amidst the chaos

Like so many of our essential services — health, water, schools and colleges, secondary roads, broadband and whatever you’re having yourself — our prison system is hardly fit for purpose.

Like other services it did not benefit from necessary investment in our days of plenty and now our jails are so overcrowded that 20% of prisoners are free on temporary release.

This serves no one well. Society is not properly protected from criminals. Criminals tempted to re-offend are not protected from themselves. And, almost most importantly of all, our Constitution, courts and gardaí — as well as any idea of justice or protection for victims of crime — are held up to ridicule by being ignored or undermined.

The recent fiasco, when garda killer Martin McDermott escaped from a low-security prison in Cavan, brought matters to a head of sorts when Justice Minister Alan Shatter and Prison Service director general Michael Donnellan apologised to the family of McDermott’s victim Garda Gary McLoughlin.

Amidst all of this dysfunction and slapstick there is a ray of light though. The announcement by Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Frances Fitzgerald, that, within three years, 16- or 17-year-old boys will no longer be held at St Patrick’s Institution is a long-overdue step in the right direction. Around 160 under-18s are detained there each year. This is no sort of start to life for teenagers who, if given the right training and opportunities, might lead an entirely different life.

€50m will be spent at the National Children Detention Facility at Oberstown, Co Dublin, with the objective of giving young offenders every chance to reach adulthood with options other than a life in crime.

It is one of life’s sad realities that most of the young people given custodial sentences come from backgrounds where opportunity is in very short supply. Family stability, education or even the security of a place to live are sometimes absent. It, therefore, seems perverse to add to the difficulties faced by these challenged and challenging young people by sending them to an institution — St Patrick’s — where they will be exposed to all of the failings of our society and prison system. This process has almost inevitable consequences for the individuals and the communities they live in.

An official inquiry first recommended the immediate closure of the institution in 1985 — near enough 30 years ago — because it was not possible to rehabilitate young people there. One half of the punishment/redemption contract with society was missing. Since then, national and international bodies — including the Ombudsman for Children — have criticised the fact that we continue to send young people, already hardened by life, to an adult prison. It is reassuring that one of those critics, the Ombudsman for Children Emily Logan, has welcomed the announcement. So too have justice campaigner Fr Peter McVerry, the Children’s Rights Alliance, Barnardos and the Irish Penal Reform Trust described the announcement as “historic”.

The path from St Patrick’s to Mountjoy is well trodden and figures showing that up to 80% of those who leave Trinity House — a detention school at Oberstown — re-offend within a year suggest the issue is as pressing as ever. Hopefully this week’s announcement will be the one that breaks the cycle of neglect, inequity and lives ruined for want of a second chance.