'You're creating a monster': Concerns raised about handling of violent inmates in prisons

Prisoners viewed their experiences negatively, highlighting the restrictive nature of the regime, which involved limited out-of-cell time in an enclosed environment, with prisoners experiencing a lack of privacy, routine, and autonomy.

Efforts to manage seriously violent inmates in Irish prisons, including those viewed as "possessing a serious potential to kill", have been ineffective or even counterproductive.

Room for improvement

New research says that prisoners have struggled "to identify any positive features" and prison officers noted substantial room for improvement in the methods deployed.

The research, Serious violence in the Irish Prison Service: Exploring the experiences of prison officers and prisoners under the Violently Disruptive Prisoner policy, found that prisoners interviewed said that being managed under the policy was "surreal, with feelings of humiliation, isolation, and fear being predominant, and prisoners’ overall wellbeing negatively impacted".

Impact of regime

Some prison officers who worked with serious offenders claimed it was effective in some ways. 

"While the regime made a positive impact on some prisoners, thus reducing their violence, there was consensus that the VDP [violently disruptive prisoner] policy often had the opposite effect," the report says. 

According to one prison officer: "You’re just creating a monster."

Participants

The study was carried out by researchers from the School of Psychology at University College Dublin and in the Irish Prison Service, who interviewed 17 participants. That comprised two prisoners currently being managed under the VDP policy, and two who had previously been managed similarly, as well as eight prison officers currently working with VDP policy prisoners, and five who had previously done so.

The prisoners and past prisoners had accrued hundreds of incidents where prison rules were broken and incidents of prison misconduct

The study notes that practice under the VDP policy has been "operationally-driven, focused primarily on containment and risk management", but that in November 2018, the National Violence Reduction Unit (NVRU) was developed to integrate a psychological perspective to the management and rehabilitation of these prisoners.

Negative experience

The study, the first of its kind here and led by Orla Gallagher, found that prisoners viewed their experiences negatively, highlighting the restrictive nature of the regime, which involved limited out-of-cell time in an enclosed environment, with prisoners experiencing a lack of privacy, routine, and autonomy.

They also said it was "incredibly solitary, involving minimal human contact in an isolated environment", while prison officers emphasised that the regime was not appropriate for prisoners with mental illness. 

Staff-prisoner interactions

The same study found that adverse childhood experiences, drugs, and medication-related issues were factors in violence. Other factors included negative staff-prisoner interactions, gang-related issues, and staff shortages.

One finding was that positive staff-prisoner relationships should be encouraged and facilitated, and that "positive management-staff relationships should be paid due attention in order to improve the experiences and outcomes of prison officers, and subsequently prisoners".