Ryan O'Rourke: Prison visiting is an experience of shame and powerlessness
A 12-year-old Ryan O'Rourke and his father Brian, who was imprisoned for smuggling cannabis just three years later.
A heavy metal gate slides closed behind me, cutting off the only access to the outside world.
At the other side of the small, claustrophobic hallway in which I stand is another gate, which begins to open just as the first seals closed.
A system that means both doors are never open at the same time, not even an inch. No chance of escape.
It’s 2009, I’m 15 and walking into Limerick Prison.
I’m led into another room, a bit bigger than your average bathroom. There are no windows, only a large, walk-through metal detector, a sniffer dog and a number of stern-faced guards.
I come face to face with a prison officer. “Hands out” he says firmly, as he quickly and robotically searches me. Far more efficient and determined than any nightclub bouncer.
“Carry on,” he says.
Next up is the dog. If he sits, you’re in trouble.
It’s his job to smell for drugs and all the other things that are not allowed in here.
But how do we know that’s the only reason he sits? What if he smells another dog, or what if he’s just tired? He does look old. But he doesn’t sit and I go on.
I go into the final room. A long, well-lit space that reminds me of a school cafeteria.
In the middle stretches a long bench, with a small wooden partition.
The long table is divided up by guards sitting on lifeguard chairs. They watch your every movement.
I walk to the end of the room and see him, my dad. I want to hug him, but before I can a voice from the big chair reminds me of the rules. “No contact.”
Prisons, by their very nature, are not meant to be places where people want to visit. Their very existence is meant to stand as a deterrent.
Do wrong, and you will end up in here. Keep your nose clean and you don’t have to ever worry about what goes on behind those walls, right?
But maybe that isn’t always the case.
See every week, hundreds of visitors make the trip through the gates of our country’s prisons. In fact, according to The Irish Penal Reform Trust, in 2016, there were more than 130,000 family visits to Irish prisons.
The only thing they are guilty of is continuing to visit their loved ones after they were incarcerated.
But as this week’s reports have shown, these visits are often marred by underlying attitudes of aggression, discrimination and a deep, unmistakably Irish feeling of shame.
Hearing these stories I can attest that not much has changed over the years. I was a visitor too.
My dad, Brian O’Rourke, was convicted of smuggling cannabis and for his crimes, he received four years in Limerick prison, of which he served three.
So once a week for three years, I would accompany my brother and mother down to Mulgrave Street to pay a visit to Dad.
Now bear in mind this is the man who raised me.
He wasn’t the perfect father but he was there for me – and I was set to do the same for him.
The IRPT says prison visits are important to maintain relationships and support the prisoner's mental wellbeing.
As well as that, visits humanise the prison experience for the prisoner.
Stable family relationships and community ties have also been recognised as important factors in reducing offending.
So we endured the weekly trips and the stress that came with them.
And eventually, my life would grow to revolve around these visits. A mixture of excitement, at seeing my dad and filling him in on all of life’s happenings.
But on the other hand, it was a trip to Limerick prison, not exactly the family day out you’d tell your friends in school about.
Underage pat-downs, overly intimate searches and a feeling of scrutiny that should be reserved only for those who were inside those walls were common themes on every visit.
The Irish Prison Service has assured me that these types of searches are, and were not policy.
I wonder to this day did anyone ever complain. I didn’t, that’s for sure, I was too embarrassed.
We live in a country where shame is currency, and the families of prisoners have paid out in droves.
So when I heard of the female counsel and how she was forced to remove her bra in order to attend a visit, I wasn’t surprised.
What did surprise me was that the Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, had described the incident as “shocking and unacceptable”. Never would I have believed the Taoiseach would care about the plight of the visitor.
During my time visiting my dad, I had felt small and invisible. I knew what we were going through wasn’t exactly right, such as the pat-downs and searches, but I also felt as if I forwent certain rights and privileges, as a cost of seeing my father.
This place was not a kind one, not for any of us.
One memory, in particular, stands out in the old waiting room.
An English woman, in her 70s, was speaking to the guard at reception. She was late for her scheduled appointment.
The ferry had been delayed on the way over, she explained through her tears.
She was crying, because she wouldn’t get to come back, not for a long time. And her son, he "wasn’t doing too well".
Even at that age, I could guess what that meant.
Yet despite her pleas, she was ignored and wasn’t granted a visit, and I never saw her again.
It sounds miniature in the grand scheme of things, and maybe it was.
But to me, it summarised everything. Your feelings, your worries, your love, meant nothing in here. This was a prison, and you were now a guest.
You see, the prison was a place of systems and schedules, rules and order.
The men and women who resided there were there for a reason, as is according to our courts of law.
There was also an ever-present power divide, which played on all of our minds. The prison held all the cards. They controlled access and had the final say on whether I got to see my dad.
I'm not naive. I understand the importance of the prison’s impregnability.
I understand that every one of us, no matter our age or background, was automatically a suspect in a smuggling case that hadn’t happened yet.
I also understand that prison guards have one of the hardest jobs in the country. The stress they face each day is incomparable with any work I have ever done.
Their safety is paramount in any reforms to the visiting system that I would like to see.
But I want reform all the same.
We need investment, not just in those behind bars, but those who visit, in the hope that with the right intervention, the visitor doesn’t one day become the inmate, as so often becomes the case.
I wonder to this day how many more boys and girls walk through those gates, losing part of themselves in the process. Each one, guilty by association and nothing more.
I, myself, could easily have taken the wrong path, invited by that guilt, if not for the never-ending strength of my mom, who kept me on the straight and narrow.
My dad became one of the prison’s success stories. He went in a drug smuggler and came out an artist with an education. He would go on to study in the Limerick School of Art and Design and received a degree in fine art, an achievement of which I am incredibly proud.
Today, my heart goes out to families of prisoners, who due to Covid-19, are only seeing their loved ones for the first time in months.
The same old rigmarole, but with only a 15-minute visit every two weeks.
I am disappointed to see that those visiting are still not afforded basic respect. But I would like to thank the woman who spoke out. Her voice carried where others would have fallen on deaf ears.
For me, this now offers the perfect opportunity for intervention. Show the children compassion and break the cycle of crime.
Treat a man like a dog and you will soon get bitten.
Treat a child like a criminal and your prisons will always be full.
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