Sarah Harte: We need political courage and social confidence to change our penal philosophy

A female prisoner works in a Finnish prison; the prison system in Finland is much more open than in Ireland. Picture: Antti Aimo-Koivisto/AFP

Upon visiting American prisons, philosopher Alexis De Tocqueville and prison reformer Gustave de Baumont wrote in 1832, “guard against extremes and do not let the zeal with which you advocate certain means obscure the object sought to be obtained by them.”

Mick Clifford wrote in this paper last Saturday that most “ don’t care about what goes on in Irish prisons”, and that this “apathy is reflected in official circles”. He writes that the “body politic knows that there are no votes in prisons”.

Most Irish prisoners never sat a state exam and over half left school before the age of 15. Mental health issues are rife amongst the prison population with long waiting times for psychology services. Seven out of ten have addiction problems. Many are homeless on entering prison. The average cost of an “available, staffed prison space” is €80,445 per year. Is there an alternative, a more effective model?

Scandinavian countries have a reputation for humane prisons. Finland is a fascinating example of a country that radically reformed its prison system with striking results. It had a high incarceration rate, but saw its prison population plummet after altering its treatment of prisoners.

The Finns decided the purpose of prison wasn’t to punish but to rehabilitate. The main objective is to increase a prisoner’s readiness and capacity to lead a life without crime and generally make society safer

They also decided imprisonment doesn’t address social problems yet prisons should still deal with the problems a prisoner brings with them; alcohol abuse is common amongst new prisoners in Finland.

About one-third of Finnish prisons are open. Although candidates for open prisons are carefully selected, open prisons aren’t confined to white-collar criminals. They also accept those prisoners who have committed murder. Inmates are kept close to society, and family. Prison leave is an integral part of the system, with a breach rate of roughly 3.5%.

Development of self-control

There are no gates, fences, locks, or bars on the windows so people move freely around with no physical barriers to escape.

This is intentional and is meant to encourage prisoners to develop their own sense of self-control. Self-sufficiency is key.

There is no canteen and prisoners shop for and prepare their own food. Prisoners work outside the prison in local businesses or on farms; some study at university. In the evenings, they are free to exercise, watch TV or play video games. Prisoners wear their own clothes.

The punishment rests on the restriction of liberty rather than a wholesale removal of rights. They may have pulled this off because, in Finland, criminal justice policy rarely enters the political debate, so politicians don’t risk being accused of being soft on crime.

Global study

In a global study, Finland was found to have one of the world’s lowest rates of reoffending at 36%.

Our rate of recidivism within one year of being released hovers around 50%, increasing to 61% for those doing sentences of less than six months.

Finland has the lowest per capita incarceration rate in the EU with 51 people per 100,000 in some form of prison. Here, it’s around 78 per 100,000 of the general population.

Two-thirds of Finnish prisons remain closed with traditional high walls, lots of rules, and long hours in lockup and the cost of a staffed prison place is almost the same as in Ireland.

There is one key difference.

Finnish prison officers perform both security and rehabilitative functions, with each prisoner being assigned a prison officer to monitor them and facilitate their progress towards leaving and reintegrating into society

Intriguingly, this change was introduced to help prison officers rather than prisoners, as it was felt prison officers carrying out a purely punitive role suffered from a plethora of mental health problems, including high levels of stress, alcoholism, and suicide.

Irish Prison Service figures show that sick leave by prison officers cost €7.76m in 2020, rising to around €8.5m in 2021.

There was a sharp difference in sick leave taken by prisoner officers across different prisons.

In 2021, staff at high-security Portlaoise Prison took an average of 21 days of sick leave which was double the rate of sick leave at lower-security institutions such as Shelton Abbey, Co Wicklow, where the rate was 10.78 days and at Loughan House, Co Cavan, where the rate was 8.92 days.

John Cuffe, a former prison officer, has written of “The pain, the frustrations, bullying and total abandonment of any meaningful care from our employer [the department of Justice)]”.

There are 12 institutions in the Irish prison system, comprising ten traditional ‘closed’ institutions and two open centres, which operate with minimal internal and perimeter security. The Irish Penal Trust has called for expansion of the open prison service and the Finnish government estimates that it costs about 30% less to keep a prisoner at open facilities.

Criticism of open prisons

Open prisons have been likened by critics to holiday camps, with one former Finnish police officer saying, “the average Joe doesn’t understand why these crimes aren’t punished more severely –sentences handed out seem sometimes like ugly jokes from the victim’s point of view.”

Many would argue that retribution is a necessary part of punishment to provide the victims of sex abuse, rape, murder, and other violent crimes with a sense of justice. Looking at images from Scandi prisons, it seems unlikely, especially with the cost-of-living crisis in Ireland, that some of what they do would fly here. It’s easy to picture ‘the Club Fed’ headlines.

A report published last year by the Mental Health Commission points out that, unlike in other jurisdictions, there are no pre-arrest diversion teams here so Gardai can’t exercise discretion to divert individuals suspected of non-violent, low-level offences away from the criminal justice system and towards mental health services.

Psychiatric concerns

In 2020, the inspection report of the Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) highlighted glaring problems in the treatment of prisoners with psychiatric illnesses.

While it acknowledged the progress made in the treatment and living conditions of prisoners since 2014, and spoke highly of the prison staff in the three psychiatric facilities visited, who displayed a caring attitude, it expressed “major concern” at the rising number of homeless people in prisons, who could be bailed by the courts into the care of community psychiatric facilities if the HSE would take them.

But the HSE won’t because they are homeless and because mental health services are based on people having an address in the catchment area. This seems to be a major gap.

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The society Finnish prisoners re-enter is ordered differently. Returning Irish prisoners to an environment with few post-incarceration supports is unlikely to achieve a desired reduction in rates of re-offending.

But it would take political courage and social confidence to change our penal philosophy. There would have to be consensus about what an effective prison system means – are prisoners sent to prison ‘as punishment’ or ‘for punishment’?

Mick Clifford wrote that a new book by prison officer David McDonald might hopefully “open up some debate in this area of public life that has always been shoved into a quiet, dark corner”.

There is a striking photo on Twitter of a football match between members of the Oireachtas and Mountjoy prisoners, organised last week by the Irish Prison Service, Senator Lynn Ruane, Labour TD Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, and Bohemians football club. It caused me to wonder if we could do some reimagining of our own.

The prisoners won, by the way.