Murder must spur efforts to humanise prisons

The latest prison visiting committee reports are set to castigate overcrowding

The latest prison visiting committee reports are set to castigate overcrowding. Valerie Bresnihan argues that in the wake of the recent murder in Mountjoy, the problem must be addressed.

The murder of Gary Douch by a fellow inmate in Mountjoy Prison recently is deeply disturbing. I believe that certain current mental health policies in operation have been, however unintentionally, major contributing factors in this murder. Another crucial contributing factor is overcrowding.

Gary Douch had requested to be put on protection. This type of request is not unusual. He was put into a holding cell with others - including a 23-year-old-man who has since been questioned about his murder and who reportedly suffers from schizophrenia.

A holding cell is meant to be just that: a cell where a person is held on their way into or out of prison. It does not have beds or toilets, merely seats. The only reason six men had to sleep in this holding cell on the night of Gary Douch's murder was chronic overcrowding.

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There are several interconnected reasons why overcrowding has become endemic in our prison system and why it can be so disastrous. Firstly, in my view, an increasingly punitive mindset has developed throughout the political system over the last 20 years. Secondly and related, control measures such as more powers to the Garda, restrictions on the right to bail, mandatory sentences, legislation to reduce the rights of the offender, however justified, take on a more sinister punitive dimension in the absence of balanced legislation and dedicated resources for rehabilitation measures.

Thirdly, when a prison system is underpinned by a solely punitive approach, as ours is, rehabilitation will become but a faint shadow, discontent will flourish, and a culture of criminality will thrive.

Fourthly and as a direct consequence of all of the above, chronic overcrowding becomes politically acceptable.

It is at this juncture that things can go very wrong, daily tensions are the norm and tragedies happen.

But, to be constructive, how can overcrowding be confronted?

The first thing to be done is to examine the reasons for committal in the first place. Ireland has an exceptionally high use of imprisonment, detaining 2½ times more per capita than the UK, for example.

Two particular groups need not, in general, be committed to prison. In 2004, 1,000 of the 3,400-prison population were imprisoned for failing to pay a fine for an offence that the judge did not consider worthy of imprisonment but there were no suitable alternative community programmes available. Not so long ago, two families of six children were left unattended while their mothers were imprisoned for not paying their TV licences.

The second group is the mentally ill. Appropriate resources are abysmally scarce both in society and inside prison. Many mentally ill people, properly treated, would never have committed crimes in the first place. Our sin is to have neglected them in the community.

The introduction of mental health courts, similar to our remarkably successful Drug Courts, would be a useful way to redirect mentally ill patients to a healthier and better life. Obviously, some of this group will need supervised and closed community protection for a time.

Finally, the prison system at large usually denies the most obvious consequence of overcrowding: dehumanisation. Some high-profile ex-prisoners like Jeffrey Archer and Jonathan Aitken, discovered to their horror exactly how inherently destructive and dehumanising an overcrowded prison was. Most telling, they discovered how their former apathy and previous lack of interest in prisons enabled them to preserve myths they had grown up with.

This ignorance had insulated them from the uncomfortable questions which their own imprisonment forced them to face. Today, they espouse prisons for only the very few and the most dangerous.

There are possible solutions. But do we have the courage to implement them? If the mentally ill and those who do not pay fines were catered for in more appropriate settings, there would be less overcrowding in our prisons. Both inmates and ultimately society might then be a lot safer. The more profound question, of course, is this: is the current ideological mindset likely to move from excessive retribution towards balance and rehabilitation?

After all, a simple ceiling on the numbers of inmates in every prison would improve the current prison culture and all its ugly consequences. Community services can and do work well for minor crimes.

It is to be hoped that valuable lessons will be learned and that a determination to humanise the prison system, thus helping to avoid such recent tragedies, will emerge from the murder of Gary Douch.

Dr Valerie Bresnihan is a former member of the Mountjoy Prison visiting committee and a candidate in the next election to Seanad Éireann for the NUI constituency