Examination of Witnesses (Questions 303
- 319)
TUESDAY 4 NOVEMBER 2003
MR PAT
MAGUIRE
Q303 Chairman: We learnt a lot yesterday.
What we want to do now is to take things on from what we did learn
yesterday and also importantly to get some of it on the record.
Of course yesterday's meeting was informal. You described to us
the escalating level of protests in the middle of this year. How
much did they arise from routine prison management issues rather
than a determination on the part of the paramilitaries to achieve
separation?
Mr Maguire: The two highlighted
issues were of course the rooftop demonstrations and, prior to
that, there were various incidents; they were not on the scale
of rooftop demonstrations. Certainly the first rooftop demonstration
on 27 June, as I recall, had a combination of prisoners, both
Catholic and Protestant, who may have had some tentative links
with paramilitary organisations, more by association than anything
else. At no stage during that particular incident was any mention
made of separation, segregation, or anything else. They seemed
to be concerned about the doubling up of prisoners in cells in
Roe and Bush Houses. At no stage during that particular protest
was there any indication, certainly in the first one, as far as
I could see as Governor, to do with the separation issue. After
the rooftop demonstration, there was a series of cell wreckings
to a greater or lesser degree, some where all the furniture in
the cells was trashed including sanitary ware and on other occasions
it was just token damage to the furniture. Where it moved from
being, in my view, ordinary prisoners protesting over certain
conditions of the regime, you had a situation where some of these
paramilitary prisoners, particularly Republican and dissident
prisoners, were actively engaged in cell wrecking.
Q304 Chairman: How much do you think
these prison management issues, particularly referring to the
first rooftop incident, should have been dealt with by management
within the prison before it came to that?
Mr Maguire: The question of the
prisoners protesting was clearly, as far as I was concerned, to
do with the doubling up issues. We were forced down a particular
path where we needed accommodation within the prison. The population
had been rising steadily and I did not have the staff to open
up the sixth house, which is Foyle House, at that stage. Therefore,
until a full review of all the staffing was carried out, we would
not be able to identify any additional resources within our own
establishment actually to manage that.
Q305 Chairman: Did you ask for extra
resources?
Mr Maguire: No, I did not actually
ask for any resources because it was quite clear that we had to
manage within our existing resources.
Q306 Chairman: Did you report to
your headquarters that you were going to have to double up and
did you think that that was going to cause you these sorts of
protests?
Mr Maguire: Headquarters were
fully aware of the rise in population, not just in Maghaberry
but in some of the other establishments, and we had obviously
to work with the resources that had been allocated to us. As far
as the protests were concerned, no, we did not think that they
would go to the scale of rooftop demonstrations.
Q307 Chairman: Had the prisoners
been making complaints through the normal channels before?
Mr Maguire: Yes, there had obviously
been some disquiet amongst the prisoners.
Q308 Chairman: You just had to say,
"I am sorry, we cannot do anything about it. We have not
got the staff"?
Mr Maguire: The situation I found
myself in was clearly that the population was rising and we had
accommodation difficulties in that at one stage we emphasised
how difficult the situation was; we had to house new committals
in the special supervision unit overnight, until we had found
accommodation within the prison. That is before they moved into
the committal unit proper.
Q309 Chairman: So you had a crisis
of your own, as it were, because you did not have the staff to
cope with the rising prison population you were required to take?
Mr Maguire: No, I did not have
the staff to man the sixth house, simply because obviously, through
natural wastage of staff and so forth, we were not up to the original
power of staffing level that we had in 2000.
Q310 Chairman: What did prison Headquarters
have to say about the situation when you said, "I cannot
open the sixth house and it is going to mean doubling up"?
Mr Maguire: On the issue of trying
to identify resources, given the inefficiencies that are inherent
in shift patterns, there was a review to be undertaken, which
has been superseded because of events during the summer and since,
where what we were trying to do was identify the work that did
not really need to be done or did not need to be done at the time
that was being done, and to try and promote efficiencies from
within the shift patterns in order to produce more staff to allow
me to begin to try and open up at least part of the sixth house.
Q311 Chairman: I do not want to put
words into your mouth but it sounds as if you, or more so prison
Headquarters than you, were trying very hard to catch up and put
things right that had gone wrong for some time but you were too
late. Would you agree with that?
Mr Maguire: No, I would not agree.
Q312 Chairman: If you were just about
to start a review and you were already in the position of overcrowding,
you could not open the sixth house because of staff and your shift
patterns were inefficient, should you not have done something
about that, or should not the system—I am not trying to
blame you personally—have done that a month before?
Mr Maguire: The question of managing
this system that we have had for very many years, the business
plan, indicated that we would engage in 2003-04 and that we would
begin to look at the systems of attendance and try and make them
more efficient, and also bearing in mind that resources are not
unlimited, we have finite resources and therefore we have to manage
within those resources.
Q313 Chairman: It has turned out
to be too late, in truth?
Mr Maguire: The whole question
of resources obviously with regard to the Steele recommendations
is going to be dealt with in a particular way. As far as the integrated
part of the prison is concerned, we have to return to those efficiencies.
We have got to return to try at some stage, presumably in 2004,
to get out of our inefficient system.
Q314 Chairman: If we do just take
the situation as it was in August this year, we have had slightly
different versions from different people as to what it was. Steele,
in a word, thought that the prison was a powder keg waiting to
explode with intimidation of ordinary criminals and prisoner-to-prisoner
attacks, which is what the Prison Officers Association told us,
and that this intimidation was growing and attacks on prisoners
were increasing. Then your Director of Prisons said that things
were reasonably OK; that a set of targets were being met; and
that what happened was just a critical mass of disruption by paramilitary
prisoners with the same agenda, which started things off. Which
of those three would you say was nearest the truth?
Mr Maguire: I think it is the
Director General's version, which indicated that things were not
quite as bad as people have portrayed. With all due respect, people
may be inclined to put their own emphasis on certain aspects of
that.
Q315 Chairman: Not as bad as Steele
portrayed?
Mr Maguire: No. As far as I am
concerned, we were managing the process. Yes, there had been a
number of incidents in 2003, and it is a matter of record that
that is the case. However, those incidents were being managed;
the process was being managed by local management.
Q316 Chairman: Have you got some
figures for us?
Governor of Inmate Services and Activities:
I would like to come in here to paint a picture of the degree
of normality that there was in Maghaberry at that time. You may
have been told about our resettlement initiative at Maghaberry,
which started in March. We had dispensed with the formal, more
typical method of sentence management planning, which is common
throughout the British Isles. The essence of that was that it
was only active within the period of imprisonment. If you want
to be really serious about resettlement and rehabilitation, you
start as soon as somebody is sentenced and it does not finish
when somebody has left the prison gate. In fact, we hand it over
to other statutory and voluntary partners in the community for
support and intervention centres. Of some 560 prisoners who had
been subject to resettlement planning from 1 April, 14 refused
to take part because of medical reasons; eight for their own reasons;
only one refused to do with paramilitary organisations; and 16
did not partake because they had too short a sentence.
Q317 Chairman: That is interesting
but it is not actually what I am trying to get at at the moment.
Let us move on. You gave us yesterday a pack in which was your
pamphlet. It says here: "Maghaberry operates an integrated
regime for those inmates wishing to work together". There
is a bit about the Steele Report: "The Northern Ireland Prison
Service firmly believes that integration, not segregation, provides
for the safest prison regimes for both prisoners and staff."
Do you still stand by that?
Mr Maguire: I do.
Q318 Chairman: From a professional
point of view, that is the way you would have wished to go?
Mr Maguire: From day one for all
of this I have indicated quite clearly that integration remains
the safest way forward. The rider, of course, is for those prisoners
who are prepared to conform with the regime, simply because, once
you move, as I said yesterday, from integration, if you deviate
in any shape or form, by implication you are moving for separation
and segregation.
Q319 Chairman: Quite rightly, you
told us yesterday that the major concern of yours was the safety
of your staff and their families.
Mr Maguire: That is of paramount
importance.
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