Irish Prison Service ‘has no policies to protect LGBT prisoners’

Prison can be a particularly dangerous place for gay, bisexual and transgender inmates (LGBT) but the Irish Prison Service does not have particular policies to deal with their concerns, the authors of a study on the topic have said.

LGBT prisoners interviewed for a study commissioned by the Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT) told researchers of their experience of harassment and bullying and the way they felt it made their lives in prison easier if they hid their sexual identity.

The researchers did not receive any direct reports of sexual violence or victimisation in prison but said the international literature suggests it remains a high risk for LGBT prisoners. The threat of violence was greatest in male prisons with their culture of “hyper-masculinity”.

Researcher Tanya Serisier said it was important that in seeking to protect LGBT prisoners, segregation did not become the "default option".

The authors of the report, Out on the Inside, recommended that the Irish Prison Service explicitly considered and address the needs of LGBT prisoners as part of overall prisoner management, response and welfare.

The service, working the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network (Glen), does have a programme for assisting gay people who work in prisons.

Patrick, a gay inmate who spoke to the researchers, said his experience of homophobic harassment from other prisoners, and the response from staff when he complained about it, was “deeply traumatising, dehumanising, and degrading”, and led him to hide his sexual identity. However Damien, a bisexual inmate, said that he he reported threats of violence to his prison governor, the response was supportive.

The researchers said that while single-cell accommodation should be the norm in prisons, it was particularly necessary for LGBT prisoners.

Speaking from the floor at the launch of the report, Feargal Black, director of care and rehabilitation with the Irish Prison Service, said dealing with the issues raised in the report would be "challenging" and that to say anything different would be unfair. He said that in his eight years in the prison service, he had dealt with two transgender prisoners.

Broden Giambrone of Transgender Equality Network, said that since the Gender Recognition Act 2015 people can self-determine their gender by way of a statutory declaration, yet the prison service allocated people to male and female prisons based on their genitalia or their birth certificates. In the UK a transgender woman sent to a male prison had recently killed herself.

Brian Sheehan of Glen said LGBT people had to struggle with their identities, and then found they had to hide their sexual identity if they were sent to prison.

However he said the report, and the work the prison service was doing with Glen, were both signs of how conditions in Ireland were improving for the LGBT community.

The authors of the report were: Dr Nicola Carr, Dr Siobhán McAlister, and Dr Serisier, all of Queen's University, Belfast. The research was supported by the Community Foundation of Ireland.