We do not have a good record when it comes to young offenders and children in trouble with the law. The accounts of the workings of the Children's Court, published in this newspaper last year, provided an insight into an overstretched system that could do little to tackle the problems confronting the young people that came before it. Now we have a wake-up call from Fr Peter McVerry, a veteran campaigner on behalf of disadvantaged youngsters, who has called for the closure of St Patrick's Institution, where young offenders between the ages of 17 and 21 are incarcerated.
Fr McVerry addressed this issue in a lengthy and closely-argued article in the Jesuit journal Working Notes. In response, the Prison Service pointed to the re-opening of four workshops at St Patrick's and its planned move to a new prison site in north Dublin. But Fr McVerry's central argument remains - St Patrick's Institution is not aimed at the rehabilitation of offenders. And his comments are well-timed in that they coincided last week with the publication of crime statistics in which recidivism will have played a major part.
Fr McVerry describes the regime faced by young offenders, who typically have emerged from dysfunctional families and have been failed by the social supports that should have assisted them and by the education system. The vast majority are functionally illiterate, with all the problems of disadvantage and low self-esteem this brings. Yet they are bursting with the energy typical of this age group, turned to good effect in colleges and on playing fields by their more privileged contemporaries.
They are locked up for 19 hours a day. For the remaining five hours, the limited educational activities that are available must compete with all other recreational activity. It is small wonder that such prisoners seek the solace of drugs. And in response, there is one dedicated 12-bed detox facility in the whole prison system for which, inevitably, there is a waiting list.
Fr McVerry points out that about one third of those held in St Patrick's are legally children, but they enjoy none of the legal protections normally afforded to those under the age of 18. He poses a pertinent question: what does Irish society want from a detention facility for young people? Is it that they be enabled to re-enter society with their offending behaviour addressed, able to participate in society? Or is it merely to contain them, out of sight and out of mind, until they are released on to the streets, as unskilled as when they went in, their anger undiluted, their addictions unaddressed, their criminal skills enhanced and their criminal contacts extended?