The Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, has this week announced the setting up of a Prisons Authority and the appointment, within the next couple of months and by open competition, of a director-general of the authority.
While this is a positive and welcome initiative, its political origins in the Judge Dominic Lynch debacle, which exposed serious communications and managerial problems in the Department of Justice, should not be forgotten.
The original announcement of an Independent Prisons Board, in November 1996, by the then Minister, Mrs Nora Owen, was widely perceived as a desperate effort to deflect criticism from herself and the Department of Justice. It was also a major volte-face, since the Department had argued strongly against an independent board in its 1994 policy document, The Management of Offenders, and the Whitaker Committee's recommendation for such a board had been steadfastly ignored for a decade.
The birth of the Prisons Authority in political expediency is relevant because the authority's future effectiveness and potential for spearheading significant cultural change in the management of prisons will depend on the sincerity of the Government's commitment to properly empower the Prisons Authority.
The British experiment with the concept provides a salutary reminder of how easily innovative arrangements like this can unravel. The first British director-general found his office the target of more daily political interference than the Home Office Prisons Department ever had received. In fact, he quickly became a ministerial whipping-boy and, following a few highly-publicised escapes by prisoners, found himself out of office.
It is hard to imagine that the present announcement is not being greeted with considerable relief in the Department of Justice. Despite large-scale investment and some important real reforms, the prison system remains chaotic and in crisis. The more obvious problems include, in comparison with other Western European countries, an overuse of imprisonment for non-violent property crime and fine-defaulters; some appalling conditions of imprisonment with grossly overcrowded, insanitary conditions, widespread idleness, and in some prisons a dominant opiate drugs culture; the undue influence of the POA, evidenced by the extraordinary Irish combination of one of the best officer-to-prisoner ratios in the world and a massive bill for overtime; and a totally disproportionate and counterproductive use of imprisonment for young offenders.
While the Minister for Justice may be correct in claiming that this initiative is "the most fundamental reform of the Prison Service since the State was founded", the new director-general and the authority will have the unenviable task of confronting these profoundly complex, deep-rooted problems of the Irish prison system. It is obvious that they will not be able to achieve much without substantial input by other agencies, such as the new courts service, the health boards, and the Probation and Welfare Service.
Many of the prison system's problems will not be solved except in the context of the criminal justice system as a whole. Indeed, as the Governor of Mountjoy, Mr John Lonergan, often points out, many of the prison system's problems are truly society's problems. Our prisons are clearly used to an unacceptable degree as repositories for people from the most socially and economically disadvantaged classes, whom society's other institutions, such as the education system, have failed.
Genuine reform will require high-level co-ordination and the continued commitment and energy of the Minister and the Government. For example, the whole area of alternatives to custody has been scandalously neglected in this country. The Probation and Welfare Service has been allowed to stagnate at just the time when it should have been greatly expanded, at least at a rate equivalent to that at which the prison system is expanding.
While expectations about the ability of the Prisons Authority to deliver major improvements should be modest, there are a number of areas within the prison system to which it could make a major contribution. A properly implemented independent Prisons Authority could bring substantial benefits through depoliticisation, greater accountability, and more coherent and goal-directed planning.
The depoliticisation of the day-today running of the prisons would be an important gain. There are two aspects to this: first, the elimination of political influence on decisionmaking about the execution of sentences; and second, depoliticisation of internal prison policy and management issues, including, most importantly, a normalisation of management-union relations, especially with the POA.
Accountability is a crucial aspect of such an inevitably secret, hidden corner of State activity. There will clearly be an onus on the Prisons Authority to communicate to the Dail and the public about the activities under its control. The appointment of a full-time independent inspector of prisons should greatly facilitate this aim. The demand will be also for timely and informative annual reports and the clear statement of goals and long-term objectives for the system. It would be hard for the authority to do any worse than the Department in this regard, since the last annual report published was for 1994 and that report completely omitted all the normal statistical data.
BUT accountability also has a managerial aspect. There will be considerable gains if the new Prisons Authority is run more along the lines of a modern business than by the traditional civil service code. It is essential that decisions are clearly attributable to individual managers, who can be held responsible for their performance. Such managers will have a lively interest in basing their decisions on objective facts and on informed analysis of the system. Greater accountability of this kind could also result in the empowerment of line management. Currently within the civil service structures, the professional services, which should be the backbone of a truly rehabilitative system, too often find themselves under-resourced, disempowered and frustrated.
A less political and more informed and accountable system could slowly begin to plan for and put in place the long-term reforms that are required to create a more effective and just prison system. Not all the changes of recent years have been negative. The new prisons currently under construction will ease the overcrowding problem and for the first time will provide a separate regime for remand prisoners. Innovative therapeutic services have been introduced for sex offenders and drug abusers. There is also considerable optimism and commitment to be found in educational and work-training projects, especially those resourced by Europe under the Integra programme. These are based on modern partnership and participative models of intervention which promise to provide much more appropriate and effective forms of rehabilitation, tailored to the individual needs of offenders.
The Prisons Authority will have the opportunity to build on these important initiatives and maximise their impact. The authority will be required to reorganise the system so that these more constructive approaches are not just token gestures but come to characterise the prison regime as a whole.
Dr Paul O'Mahony is a Lecturer in Psychology in the School of Occupational Therapy, TCD, and author of Mountjoy Prisoners: A Sociological and Criminological Profile
