Report condemns imprisonment of females in North

A DAMNING report into the detention of women and girls in a prison was issued by the North’s province’s Human Rights Commission yesterday.

It attacked “endemic failures” in the regime under which girls as young as 14 were held at Mourne House inside top security Maghaberry Prison in Co Antrim.

It said the transfer in June this year of female inmates to accommodation at a male young offenders’ centre was “entirely inappropriate”.

The report called for an independent public inquiry into the regime at Mourne House, the deaths of two inmates in 2002 and 2004, and the circumstances in which prison officers were suspended and dismissed following allegations of “inappropriate conduct” with female inmates.

The report - “The Hurt Inside: the imprisonment of women and girls in Northern Ireland” - was commissioned by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission following the death in custody of a female prisoner aged 19 in Mourne House in 2002 and publication of a highly critical Prisons Inspectorate report on the regime in 2003.

The authors, Professor Phil Scraton and Dr Linda Moore, said when they inspected the prison, far from responding to the criticisms of the inspectors’ report, the regime in Mourne House had “deteriorated significantly”. They said their research found “a regime in operation that neglected the needs of women and girl prisoner and that failed to meet minimum standards of a duty of care”.

The report accepted the Northern Ireland Prison Service, and Maghaberry in particular, was emerging from a prolonged period of poor industrial relations.

The report recommended the Prison Service declare the transfer to Hydebank to be a temporary measure and that it initiates full consultation with interested parties to develop a long-term strategy, appropriate operational policies and establish best practice for women’s imprisonment in the North.