Bishop challenges Ministers on prisoners

A Catholic bishop has said he would like to invite three Government Ministers, the Garda Commissioner, and senior civil servants from the Department of Justice to spend a week with him "among the people who make up 75 per cent of our prison population".

The Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin, Dr Eamonn Walsh, who lives in Tallaght, was asked what he would do if he had control of the Department of Justice for a time. He replied that he would first say "the serenity prayer".

Then he would like to invite the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, the Minister for Education, Mr Martin, the Minister for Social, Community, and Family Affairs, Mr Ahern, the Garda Commissioner, Mr Byrne, "and top people of the Department [of Justice]" to lunch.

There he would ask them if they would be prepared "to go out and live in their [prisoners] family circumstances, to see what difficulties they experience within their home, within their community, and whether they would survive there."

His next question to them would be "what immediate action do we need to take in our education system, our policing, in health care and social welfare that would lessen the likelihood of such people as these ending up in prison?" Bishop Walsh, who has long been interested in the welfare of prisoners and prison reform, was speaking in an interview with Father Gerard Moloney in the November issue of Reality magazine.

He explained that "about 75 per cent of the present prison population comes from socially disadvantaged areas."

The question had to be asked, he said, whether such people are more criminal than people in other areas "or is it just that the crime that they indulge in is the type of crime more readily convicted?"

He believes they are as good as people anywhere else. "They don't have the same doors opened to them, the same opportunities. A lot of them have experienced great brokenness in their lives and prison becomes the bottleneck for a lot of social, educational, and family difficulties that just get out of hand," he said.

He put out a challenge to the taxpayer as well as to the authorities. "Are we prepared to tackle the root causes that lead people into crime who otherwise might not have ended up in that situation if they had been dealt the same hand as you or I as taxpayers?" he asked.