A review of Irish prisons would cost relatively little – and why not start with women?
ARE WOMEN different? Should they be treated differently to men, particularly when it comes to crime and imprisonment?
Kathleen McMahon resigned as governor of Dóchas, the women’s prison, because her position had become “impossible” due to overcrowding and a move away from progressive rehabilitation policies.
Her resignation prompted calls for an urgent review of policy regarding the imprisonment of women. But why just women? In an age of equality, is it appropriate to single out women for special consideration?
Another woman in the news this week, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, was viewed as an enlightened minister for justice in her time. For example, she launched the document The Management of Offenders: A Five Year Planin 1994. It stated that prison is "an option of last resort" and people are sent to prison as punishment, not for punishment.
That message of prison being punishment in itself remains aspirational. Paul MacKay, outgoing member of the Mountjoy Visiting Committee, outlined last week a horrific litany of demeaning conditions, including the use of buckets as toilets in crowded cells. In 2010!
The €108,000 which Geoghegan-Quinn intends to “gift” to the State is €6,000 more than it costs to keep someone in jail for a year. Yet we are locking up more and more people.
Attitudes to women who commit crime have long prompted discussion, including the wonderfully misogynistic views of Otto Pollak. Writing in the 1950s and 1960s, Pollak believed female crime went under-reported and under-punished because women were more devious and better at concealing crime.
Also, he wrote, the innate chivalry of the men who ran the justice system meant women received more lenient treatment. Later, feminist writers countered by saying women who committed crime were seen as so deviant and so “unnatural” that they received harsher treatment than men.
I visited Dóchas some years ago, when overcrowding meant 90 prisoners instead of the 81 it was constructed for. Today, it sometimes houses 120 women.
The contrast between the bright, modern facilities for women and the literally Victorian conditions endured by men across the way was stark. Dóchas is immeasurably superior to the men’s facility, which is dirty, dangerous and drug-ridden.
It is often forgotten, though, that women endure unsuitable conditions in Limerick prison, spending 18 hours a day locked in their cramped cells. There are also enlightened and humane conditions for men, such as in the open prison at Shelton Abbey.
The problem is not that some women, or some men, have better conditions. It would be perverse to suggest progress would consist of treating them all equally badly. We need a humane system for all prisoners, and women provide a useful starting point.
The majority of women are imprisoned for non-violent crime, often poverty-related.
Baroness Jean Corston wrote a groundbreaking British report on women in prison. Much of it applies to Ireland. In 2008, at a seminar organised by the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, she said: “To a startling extent, these women have experienced sexual abuse in childhood. We are rightly exercised about the perpetrators of child abuse, but seem slow to give serious attention to the fate of their victims. A disturbingly large number end up in prison.”
She said while men in prison often have a partner at home, women frequently do not. She painted a heartbreaking picture of women trying to do long-distance rearing using the tiny amount of phone time they are allowed.
In Ireland, we allow women to keep their babies for a year in prison, but children at home may end up being fostered or in care.
Numerous studies show female prisoners are also more likely than male prisoners to have a history of mental ill-health, to use more illegal drugs, to be on more prescribed medication and to have a history of unemployment.
In fairness, none of the organisations calling for an urgent review of conditions for women are suggesting things are hunky-dory for men. The problem is prison is a degrading experience for so many men and women. Prison should be reserved for serious crimes, whether by men or women. Our primary focus should be on prevention, on early intensive family and educational support, and on creating conditions where marriage is not a middle-class luxury.
Scotland plans to phase out short sentences, replacing them with “constructive ways to compensate or repair harms caused by crime, including unpaid work, [and] engaging in rehabilitative work that benefits both victims and the community”.
Instead of planning mega-prisons like Thornton Hall, we should do the same. Looking at women is as good a place to start as any. Baroness Corston completed her work in nine months, at a cost of £70,000.
Eoin Carroll, acting director of the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, suggested Geoghegan- Quinn’s gift could go to funding a review of women and prison. It sure as heck would beat funding another year for a prisoner.
bobrien@irishtimes.ie