January is a difficult month for prisoners and last year, for one woman in Hydebank near Belfast, it was impossible. In despair she tore a strip from her clothes and put it around her neck. She was already known to be a vulnerable prisoner. Staff met and decided she was "crying out for help". The woman asked to be taken to the prison healthcare centre.
She was dressed in an anti- suicide canvas gown and made to leave her jewellery behind. In the healthcare centre, most of the staff were men. She was locked in a sparsely furnished observation cell, while next door, a young male prisoner who had threatened to attack women, played loud music late into the night. The woman beat at her door for hours but no one came.
According to the authors of a depressing new report on women in prison in the North, to be published today, this woman's experience is typical of the contradictions in the system. Staff were concerned for the prisoner's safety, and spent considerable time discussing her situation.
However, what she was offered was a night next door to a menacing young man in "the isolation and desolation of a bare observation cell . . . dressed in an ill-fitting gown and lying on a hard mattress". As a consequence, "a woman with a history of abuse and low esteem who persistently self harmed" was given an experience "so negative that it served as a warning to her and others". She felt, in fact, punished, for being suicidal and for seeking help. She returned to her cell in a worse state than before.
Phil Scraton, who, along with Linda Moore, wrote The Prison Within for the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC), says the prison system in the North was "still incapable of responding to the complex mental health needs" of many of the women who enter it.
Scraton is a professor of criminology at Queen's University, Belfast. Moore is also a distinguished criminologist. All that has happened tragically includes the prison suicides of two young women, Annie Kelly in 2002, and Roseanne Irvine in 2004.
At Roseanne's inquest earlier this year, the coroner, John Leckey, said it was apparent that women prisoners were "treated like second-class citizens" in a system which favoured males.
The NIHRC told the coroner the regime for women had "all but collapsed" by 2004. The inquest found Roseanne's suicide could have been prevented. Two weeks ago, the North's director general of prisons, Robin Masefield, apologised to her family for the way she had been treated.
That was when women prisoners were housed in Mourne House, a purpose built, separate unit within the high security prison at Maghaberry, near Lisburn. The Hurt Inside, a damning report by the NIHRC into conditions there, found that one of the biggest problems was fundamental - women who were mostly in jail for minor crimes, were kept in a high security jail for men, and men dominated.
The women had little or no access to education or training. When Roseanne was literally tearing her hair out and telling staff she was going to kill herself, she was unable to see a doctor because medical staff always saw male prisoners before women.
The British inspectorate of prisons was also highly critical of the regime. So what did the prison service do? It moved the women prisoners to a vacant unit in the grounds of another male prison, this time the centre for young offenders at Hydebank.
The 50 or so women were put in a house with no in-cell sanitation, and later moved to another while sanitation was installed in cells that were already small.
Poverty, domestic violence and sexual abuse underlie the lives of many women prisoners. Over 40 per cent of women prisoners in the North are jailed for offences to do with non payment of fines. Many are suffering from mental health problems, and have suffered physical or sexual abuse. Many are addicted to prescription drugs or illegal ones, and, or, to tobacco and alcohol. There are just four women serving life sentences in Hydebank at present.
Facilities in the community are extremely limited for vulnerable women and one probation officer said prison was used as a "dumping ground" for women with serious problems.
Moore and Scraton highlight the potentially traumatic experience of entering prison. The women may be transported in vans which are also bringing male offenders, and some of them described being subjected to sexually violent language. Then they are given a full body search, before being sent to their cells.
Although the prison is low security and has pleasant grounds, the women are unable to walk around unaccompanied by staff, because the grounds are also used by male young offenders. Use of gym and education facilities is similarly limited.
Women deemed to be at risk are kept on a corridor which also contains the punishment cells for aggressive prisoners. The women passed the time sitting, mostly in silence, at a table, on hard chairs and smoking. Occasionally they watched television or had brief conversations with officers. There was no structured programme of therapeutic activity. Women spend a great deal of time locked in their cells.
In the commitals landing, the same "dull passing of time" was observed. Women sat "seemingly lost". The atmosphere was of "resignation to time wasted." This was a malaise running right through the prison.
The "worst excesses" of the regime at Mourne House have been eliminated, the report finds. However, there is still no developed gender specific strategy, or training, though many of the staff were sympathetic to the women.
"There has been no recruitment into the prison service since the early 90s," says Scraton. "Many officers have a conflict mindset which isn't appropriate to the complicated needs of these women prisoners." It is, the report states bleakly, "a narrow regime" out of which damaged women are likely to emerge, sadly, more damaged.