Let’s be honest about why we are failing to rehabilitate prisoners

THIS year, instead of going to see A Christmas Carol at the Gate Theatre, I took my seasonal dose of Dickens by visiting Mountjoy men’s prison.

It's hard to believe such places exist in the 21st century. The B-wing of the prison, where last week prisoners staged a "dirty protest" by emptying their chamber pots out onto the corridors, is especially grim. "B base", as the lowest floor is called, is home to prisoners who have to be segregated for their own protection, generally because they've had run-ins with drug dealers within the "Joy".

The first thing you notice as you look around these cells is the enormous volume of pornographic posters plastering the walls. The cells are tiny and although Mountjoy is no longer as overcrowded as it was a number of years ago, several prisoners at a time still inhabit some cells. But more disturbing than the miniature cells and the depressing world conjured up by the pornographic posters is the absence of proper sanitation.

You have to wonder about a society that denies proper hygiene to the people it is supposed to be rehabilitating. There are no toilets in the cells of the men's prison, only chamber pots, which prisoners must queue up to empty every morning. Then they wash their faces and hands in a sink adjoining that, in which they wash their chamber pots. The men get a change of underwear only once every week and, unless they are using the gym facilities, they can't shower more than once a week either.

The conditions for the men are more difficult to understand in the light of the more civilised women's prison in Mountjoy. Here, each room has a small toilet and shower, and kitchenette facilities are provided in order to encourage the women some of whom have no experience in cooking or providing for themselves to learn some basic skills. The apartments in the women's section vary in the amount of restriction and security involved, but, generally speaking, the women are able to move from one place to another, and are more like the residents of a retirement home than incarcerated individuals who are incarcerated.

The disparity between the two prisons at least shows that the standards meted out to the men in Mountjoy are not part of a State punishment policy. It is simply a case of wilful neglect. There are no votes in improving conditions for prisoners, and while any new facilities, such as the women's prison, will reflect modern thinking, there is no appetite to upgrade older facilities in use.

But can we afford to neglect the welfare of prisoners in this way? The 2001 Garda Annual Report shows crime is on the increase. Headline crimes such as homicide, assault, sexual offences, arson, drugs, larceny, burglaries, robberies and fraud went up by 18% and more dramatic increases in serious assault, sexual assault and murder took place.

Since many of these offences were perpetrated by repeat offenders, it is worth asking why we are failing to rehabilitate prisoners. Has it to do with a prison system which abuses inmates by denying them hygiene and sanitation on the inside and a fresh start on the outside? Short-term thinking bedevils prison policy. A few years ago there was public outrage over the "revolving door" system, when Mountjoy was so overcrowded that some prisoners were getting released early to make room for new convicts. The Government's response was to provide more prison places nationwide, and to establish Cloverhill prison, rather than Mountjoy, as the centre for remanding prisoners awaiting trial.

As a result of this and other measures, Mountjoy now has only about 450 prisoners, down from more than 700 a few years ago. But while the outcry about revolving doors has died down, little in the way of reforming prisoners was achieved.

Nothing exemplifies the failure of the Irish prison system to reform offenders like the problem of drugs. Staff at Mountjoy say that 60-70% of its inmates are drug users. Supply does not seem to be a problem and the visiting room in Mountjoy is proof, if it were needed, of the ambivalence of prison authorities about the issue. Inside this room, a glass panel separates visitors from inmates but the panel rises just a foot or 18 inches above the table. Despite the presence of security cameras and prison officers, drugs are routinely passed over whether by hand, during kissing or even in babies nappies.

The governor of Mountjoy, John Lonergan, obviously believes it would be inhumane to separate prisoners from their visitors by placing a complete barrier in the visitors' room. And he deserves credit for such thinking.

But it is still worrying than nobody in authority seems able to take an absolute stand on drugs. The unspoken message is that without the narcotics, there would be pandemonium in the prison. There is no other explanation for the absence of sniffer dogs or other strategies to keep drugs out.

Last week's dirty protest was the latest, ironic portrayal of the problem. Prisoners were incensed by the introduction of tighter rules on visiting involving, among other things, the use of photo identification. This would make it harder for prisoners bringing in drugs to force other inmates to accept "visits" from drug carriers they don't even know.

The tightening of the rules by the prison authorities stemmed more from a desire to protect unwilling inmates from pushers than to rid the prison of the drug problem itself. But the only sure way to protect the safety and health of prisoners is to make prisons completely drug-free, and to make treatment of drug abusers mandatory within the system.

The unpalatable truth is that such a policy can only succeed if a drug-free environment is created for prisoners after their release as well as within the prison environment. As one prison chaplain put it: "The demand for drugs must be attacked, as well as the supply."

That won't be easy but there are certain very practical steps which could be taken, if there was the political will, to promote lifestyles for ex-prisoners that reduce the likelihood of drug-taking and the reoffending that goes with it.

One step in the right direction is the Connect project operating in Mountjoy which identifies certain categories of prisoner for work-training, and links them up with potential employers.

But where do prisoners go on release? Fr Declan Blake, the chaplain in Mountjoy, points out that a high percentage of prisoners end up homeless.

"Many prisoners leave here at weekends when they have no access to social welfare and they are not welcome at home," he says.

He argues that the wider community must take responsibility for prisoners, including the drug-abusers, if rehabilitation of prisoners is to happen. In particular, he says that local communities should be more willing to accept drug treatment for offenders from their areas.

Politicians could take a lead here by appointing people to prison visitation committees from the communities where prisoners come from, instead of the current system of political patronage which sees people from one end of the country appointed to visit prisons in the other. This mileage allowance from these visits may be a nice perk for loyal party workers but it does nothing to encourage local communities to work with the prisoners in their midst.

It is just one small example of how lightly we take our crime problem.

Until such petty thinking disappears, we are unlikely to score real successes in the fight against crime.