Examination of witnesses (Questions 340
- 349)
WEDNESDAY 15 JULY 1998
MR BRIAN
GORMALLY and MS
JAQUELINE IRWIN
340. I think the point I also had in mind
was whether, in the light of your experience and understanding,
among the ODCs with in particular longer sentences a manifestation
of resentment, a form of "sense of injustice", is going
to complicate the administering of prisoners and whether that
would make the task of the Prison Service that much harder?
(Mr Gormally) I do not think so really. In spite
of the fact that it is a matter of great political debate, I do
not think anyone in Northern Ireland makes any real bones about
there being a clear distinction between politically motivated
prisoners and ordinaries. Of course there may be individual grey
cases but in terms of somebody who is convicted of, I do not know,
domestic violence, burglary, or something of that character, I
do not think in any sense they see themselves as being in the
same category as those who have been involved in political violence.
In that sense, I do not think, although individuals may, on the
whole ordinaries compare themselves with politicals. There may
be issues around conditions, e.g. if it were the case that politically
motivated prisoners were getting better conditions or better regimes
than others, but that has not been the case and to my knowledge
it has never been raised as an issue. So I really do not think
there is going to be a problem in that respect.
Mr Browne
341. My first questions leads on from the
reference to sex offenders by my colleague. I was struck, I have
to say, by the paucity of any observations in your report about
sex offenders and more so given your reference to the number of
them that there are in the system. When we visited the prisons
of Northern Ireland one of the things that we noted was that sex
offenders were not segregated, whereas I think in all the other
prison systems in Britain and the United Kingdom sex offenders
are segregated and that is the norm. Are there problems arising
from that policy of non-segregation in your experience?
(Mr Gormally) There have been problems with sex
offenders, assaults on sex offenders and so on from time to time.
It is a moot point whether that arises from a policy of non-segregation
because even where sex offenders are segregated it is never perfect
and there are very often assaults on them. I am sure that would
be characteristic of the British system where the process of segregation
breaks down. The Prison Service so far has made a judgment that
segregation puts a great deal of pressure on the individuals,
it is more difficult to manage it in many ways, it denormalises
the regime and therefore it is to be avoided unless it is absolutely
necessary. They have come to the conclusion so far that the situation
is handle-able without segregation. I do not think that we can
particularly second-guess that, but we are of the opinion that
the safety of prisoners has to be the first priority. So if it
became clear that there were many serious assaults, for example,
on sex offenders by other offenders then that would make a case
for segregation.
342. Have you done any research or assessment
of the quality of life for sex offenders within the Northern Ireland
prison system?
(Mr Gormally) I have done no organised research
on that, no.
343. Have you made any personal observations
of the quality of life for sex offenders within the Northern Ireland
Prison Service?
(Mr Gormally) I do not think the quality of life
for sex offenders in any prison is going to be very high. Having
said that, for example, at Maghaberry they have access to vocational
training and work and education. That might be at threat under
segregated conditions. I would not have thought that their situation
was worse in the Northern Ireland situation, but I have to say
that to my knowledge no organised research on that has been done.
344. It does seem to me that if the Northern
Ireland prison system, as they have in a sense claimed in evidence
to us, are able to integrate sex offenders without an inappreciable
depreciation in the quality of life for those prisoners then they
have found a part of an answer to a problem that has bedeviled
the prison system in the United Kingdom. I wonder if you would
like to comment on that.
(Ms Irwin) I think they may have found the answer
to part of a problem. I think our organisation's interested in
the matter has been less, maybe to a fault, to do with the arrangements
for their security in large part than it has to do with what happens
to these people once they move back out into society again. So
the issues for us have been more to do with what sort of attempt
there is to handle their offending behaviour, the particular characteristics
of that offending behaviour for organisations such as ours once
they move back out into the community again.
(Mr Gormally) There is just one perhaps minor
aspect and that is, for example, in Maghaberry there is a significant
leavening of politically motivated prisoners who are disaffiliated
on the whole from their organisations. Nonetheless, amongst politically
motivated offenders attacking sex offenders would be seen to be
the kind of behaviour that ordinaries go in for and therefore
would not be seen to be proper for them. So there may be a somewhat
different attitude than might be found in a general prison in
England. I do not know whether that is the case, but there is
anecdotal evidence, and politically motivated prisoners will put
that view to you.
345. Can I move on to another type of prisoner
who is within the prison system in Northern Ireland and the type
of prisoner that you do comment on in your report at paragraph
4.4.2. When we visited Maghaberry Prison there was a 15-year old
child accommodated in the women's prison there and she was indeed,
as I understand it, the only child that was accommodated within
the prison system and may still be the only child to be accommodated
within the prison system. I have to say that I was shocked by
that. The best explanation I could get was that she was only one
and therefore there was no reason to have special accommodation
for the small numbers. You make the suggestion in your paper to
us that the idea of non-custodial and intensive supervision in
the community for such types of prisoners should be developed.
Could you expand on that, please?
(Mr Gormally) Obviously the number of women in
the system in general is small and a fairly high proportion are
politically motivated. The number of young women who either receive
a prison sentence or, as in that particular case, for example,
are passed on from a training school system for being unruly,
a danger to themselves or to others, or who are held even in relatively
secure conditions in the training school system, is small. The
cost of putting them in a cell with all the staff involved and
the expense and so on would be so high that you might as well
supervise them 24 hours a day in the community or at least in
residential care that was specially designed and was secured simply
by the number of staff who were there, if necessary, to control
the individual. The logic of the system says that we do not have
a female YOC so what we will do is we will call a bit of the female
prison a YOC and when we have this very tiny number of really
crazy kids they will end up there, but if you look laterally at
the situation, why not keep them in the community or at least
in residential care where they can be cared for in an intensive
way 24 hours a day, if that is what it takes?
346. Other than in a general sense, have
you given any more thought to this recommendation? Could you explain
how it would work in practice, and how would such a wild child
be contained within the community and not damage herself or others?
(Mr Gormally) When I say in the community, obviously
we are not talking here about the family home. One is assuming
that the difficulties are such that the child is unlikely to be
in a stable and caring home environment. It may be possible to
look at fostering in these circumstances, but I think it would
be very difficult. One suggestion could be the close supervision
unit at Shamrock House in Rathgael which is on the care side of
the training school system. It is locked but its security is based
on close supervision by a very high ratio of staff to kids. If
you are dealing with just one or two a year in a particular category,
I see no particular reason why a house at Rathgael or somewhere
else, maybe Lisnevin, could not be adapted with all the physical
security which would be necessary—and obviously if it is
as bad as that with safe rooms and so on—but with a very
high level of supervision. Whether that needs to be in the prison
estate, whether the training school system could deal with it
or whether the probation service would be the best, I do not think
really matters. It is a practical point. Something like that is
just as practical and reasonable as putting a child in an adult
prison.
Mr Beggs
347. Good afternoon. In your submission
you indicate that NIACRO believes very strongly that remand and
sentenced prisoners should be held separately. Was it a mistake
to close Belfast Prison?
(Mr Gormally) No, I think not. First of all, the
conditions in Belfast Prison were bad, physically. It is a 19th
century prison, as you know, of the classic design, not suitable
for the holding of a remand population the greater part of which
at any given time would have been politically motivated. The difficulty
of segregating factions from each other in Crumlin Road I think
was demonstrable and although it may not seem to be the best system
or the best answer in an ideal world we thought the closure of
Crumlin Road was the correct thing to do, and that the moving
of the remand prisoners to the Maze, where of course on the whole
remand prisoners are kept separate from convicted prisoners, was
the right thing to do. They are in the same prison but not mixing.
348. You also say that the innovative use
of bail support schemes could mean a reduced remand population.
Would you like to comment further on that?
(Mr Gormally) When we are talking about ordinary
prisoners one of the reasons for bail being refused is that they
are homeless or that they are not perhaps dangerous in any absolute
sense but their lifestyle is such that some degree of control
might be felt to be appropriate in a remand period, so they are
at less risk of committing further offences or of absconding.
In those circumstances it is not always necessary that custody
is the answer. Sometimes custody is used because of lack of information,
so bail information schemes are one form of bail support where
accurate information is got to the custody court on the morning
when the bail decision is being taken. That is one thing. Secondly,
bail hostels and other forms of supervision while on bail are
appropriate. Our view is that custody is bad for the taxpayer
and bad for the prisoner and the extent to which it can be reduced
with safety is always going to be positive. So bail support in
terms of bail hostels, bail information schemes and various possible
forms of supervision, and other things like education and training
packages which can be put together while people are on bail, are
positive alternatives to custody for those prisoners who are not
actually a positive danger to themselves or anybody else.
Mr Donaldson
349. You are very welcome to the Committee.
In your submission to the Committee you talked about the need
to reform and modernise the Prison Service in the wake of the
Belfast Agreement. You will be aware that in Northern Ireland
there is a substantial number of cases outstanding in respect
of criminal offences committed by terrorist organisations for
which individuals have not yet been brought to justice and subsequently
imprisoned. Whilst under the provisions of the Belfast Agreement
there will be an accelerated release of prisoners, it is still
possible for the foreseeable future that if offenders are apprehended
there could be a significant prison population belonging to the
various paramilitary and terrorist organisations. I know that
NIACRO has made the suggestion or flagged up the possibility of
considering an amnesty in respect of offences committed up to
the point of the signing of the Belfast Agreement. Obviously if
such an amnesty were introduced it would have a significant impact
on the Prison Service insofar as the expectation that we will
have more or a continuing population of paramilitary prisoners
will be reduced if not eventually eradicated; one assumes there
will be some degree of paramilitary activity. Would you like to
tell the Committee a little bit about the thought processes which
have brought NIACRO to the point where they feel an amnesty for
scheduled offences should be introduced in the wake of the Belfast
Agreement?
(Mr Gormally) First of all, my understanding of
the Sentences Bill is that where prosecution, trial and sentence
take place in the future for crimes already committed before April
10th, there will be a sentence but the people will be released
two years after that. So accelerated release as such will still
apply to people who are processed in that manner. I think that
is an important thing to note. In terms of what we have called
an amnesty, the way in which we have seen this is as being unconnected
with the issue of prisoner release. We have never argued for an
amnesty in that context. We have argued that the peace process
demanded an element of accelerated release, but we have seen amnesty
in terms of a community reconciling itself with itself. We posited
this as being something which down the road is a process which
may help the question of re-integration of ex-prisoners into society
and may help victims of a range of violence to come to terms with
that. We very strongly said that the kind of process we would
like to examine—and this is simply a suggestion for debate—would
be not necessarily exactly like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
in South Africa but embodying some of those themes, where victims
have the opportunity to tell their story. Even if it is only a
question of reading into the formal record what has happened to
them in the conflict, that is more than they have had the opportunity
to do at the present time, and of course that would apply to victims
of all violence. Secondly, it might be possible to avoid what
could be seen as the absurdity of a continuing cause of community
disharmony where the police are still looking for people many
years hence for offences committed many years ago, where trials
are taking place, sentences being given, which are nominal because
people are going to be released anyway in two years. If that process
is to continue ad infinitum it may be worth considering
an alternative to that whereby people can, on the basis of disclosure,
apply for immunity from prosecution. Where people have already
been convicted, we have got to understand that the reality is
that those people will have and do have criminal convictions which
can be a difficulty in all kind of areas, employment, insurance
and so on and this would be a way of wiping the slate clean from
that point of view and would demonstrate that society was prepared
to fully receive people into it who had been involved in political
violence. Our argument is that reintegration is a two-way process.
It is not just about ex-prisoners changing, it is also about society
changing. We are thinking about it two or three years down the
road. When society is ready to go for more radical forms of healing
than it has so far then this maybe an idea worth considering.
Mr Donaldson: Reform
and modernization of the Prison Service. Assuming we continue
to have over a period of time a prison population where there
is an element of prisoners connected to terrorist associations,
have you any proposals to make in respect of how that could be
developed or changed in terms of the way that it is managed at
the moment?
Chairman: There is
a Division in the House and Mr Donaldson has kindly indicated
to me that, as the Committee has to attend the division, he will
not expect a reply to his last question. Therefore, may I on behalf
of the Committee thank you for the evidence you have given us
today and, although the meeting has been curtailed, if you wish
to gloss or submit further evidence to your answers, please do
not hesitate to do that. Thank you very much indeed.
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