Examination of Witnesses (Questions 620
- 639)
THURSDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2003
MR MARK
LEWIS AND
MR JAMES
DUFFY
Q620 Chairman: Is that because you
cannot provide those facilities or is this something that has
been provided consciously for the paramilitaries?
Mr Duffy: Consciously. As far
as we were concerned it was done deliberately by the Governor
or people above him, headquarters took the decision.
Q621 Chairman: Here is where I really
would like to make sure we have got this absolutely clear. Are
you saying that Governor Maguire took the decision that paramilitary
prisoners and their visitors were to be treated differently and
better, or are you saying it was Prison Service headquarters that
decreed that this should be the regime for the paramilitaries?
Mr Lewis: I believe that Mr Maguire
implemented it, yes, but I believe the decision came from headquarters.
Q622 Chairman: Do you have any evidence
that it came from headquarters?
Mr Duffy: Not at the moment, no.
Q623 Chairman: Is it generally accepted
that it came from headquarters?
Mr Lewis: Yes, sir. It is believed
by the staff that the instruction came from headquarters.
Q624 Chairman: Have you asked Mr
Maguire this?
Mr Duffy: We have asked Mr Maguire
for meetings for the past three to four months, but all the meetings
we have arranged have been cancelled at short notice with no alternative
dates given.
Q625 Chairman: And you have not seen
the Governor outside?
Mr Duffy: No. He has been called
away at short notice to meetings at headquarters and everything
else. We have regular monthly meetings with the Governor every
third Tuesday of every month.
Q626 Chairman: When was the last
one?
Mr Duffy: About three or four
months ago.
Q627 Chairman: Could you say exactly?
Mr Duffy: I cannot at the moment,
but I could find out and write back to you.
Q628 Chairman: Did you raise the
question of the executive suite and visitor privileges the last
time you met?
Mr Duffy: We wrote to Mr Maguire
about all the problems that were being created when the segregated
visits were going on for a one week period at the same time and
in the same room whilst amendments were being made to the old
room and explained to him that the visitors coming in were perceiving
that things were different and the Governor said, "Sure the
prisoners don't know what facilities there are, they are all blocked
out", but their visitors were coming in using exactly the
same way as the visitors in the segregated area, so they had to
walk by it before getting to their own area and their own visitors
were telling them.
Q629 Chairman: You have an excellent
filing system in front of you. When did you write to the Governor?
Mr Lewis: It is all in the file
that we submitted to the Committee.
Q630 Chairman: Did you have a reply?
Mr Duffy: No, sir.
Mr Lewis: Can I give you a little
background information into where we are coming from?
Q631 Chairman: Please do.
Mr Lewis: After the implementation
of Mr Steele's report on about 8 September the perception of the
staff and of the junior and middle management was that there seemed
to be an almost indecent haste to implement Mr Steele's report.
There were geographical building changes that had to be made to
incarcerate these people in. We realised that this was going to
take a little time, but all of a sudden we were being told that
meetings were taking place at headquarters level with paramilitary
representatives and we were given the names of these individuals:
a Mr Tommy Kirkham of an organisation called the UPRG, which is
the political wing of the UDA, a Miss Marion Price, which is the
political name of the Continuity IRA, and a Mr W Smith of the
PUF political wing of the UVF.
Q632 Chairman: Is that one of the
Price sisters?
Mr Lewis: I am afraid so, yes.
It was the Abercorn Restaurant bombing in Belfast and also bombings
in mainland Britain. She was sentenced to life in prison and released
after seven years because she developed Anorexia Nervosa. I believe
from memory it was two murders at the Abercorn Restaurant.
Q633 Chairman: Was her sister called
Dolores?
Mr Lewis: That is correct. She
now represents the Continuity IRA. We were quite shocked to find
that regular meetings were taking place both at headquarters level
with these people and also in the Stormont Hotel opposite headquarters
and all of a sudden we were being asked to rush through measures
that we simply did not have the geographical preparation for.
So the Governor was instructed—and when I say the Governor
I am referring to Mr Maguire—to move very quickly the Nationalist
quadrant of prisoners. Mr Maguire came to us, we looked at various
areas and we said, "Governor, we have great fears and reservations
that if you move one of these groups without simultaneously moving
the other group it will be perceived by the other group that you
are treating them differently and of course they may spontaneously
react." Mr Maguire was then instructed to move the Nationalist
prisoners into Foyle Residential House. There was a dirty protest
going on at the time. He moved the prisoners, the charges against
the prisoners for fouling their cells with excrement were dropped
and other measures that had been taken against them were dropped
and they were then segregated. The Loyalist prisoners were not
segregated and reacted as we predicted—and the letters are
all in the file here—spontaneously, they started to commit
acts of destruction, they started to attack prison officers' homes
outside the jail and after a further two weeks and a degree of
destruction and damage Mr Maguire was then instructed by headquarters
to move the Loyalist prisoners. This was after locking the Loyalist
prisoners down for four days after they had attempted to take
two members of staff hostage.
Mr Duffy: It was three members
of staff in Bann 5 and 6, that is referred to under tab 17 of
our evidence.
Mr Lewis: So Mr Maguire then separated,
segregated, clustered the Loyalist prisoners. These people have
a kind of child-like mentality and if they interpret that one
organisation from one side of the community is getting something
that they are not getting they then react spontaneously usually
with some form of aggressive measuring, as we predicted. The letters
demonstrate exactly and precisely that what we said would happen
happened.
Mr Duffy: We even had a demonstration
at the external gate.
Mr Lewis: We had 600 to 700 members
of the UDA arrive outside our jail one Sunday in paramilitary
drill-type formation preventing the staff entering or leaving
the prison, we had no warning of it. We then had to send for army
and police reinforcements and effectively they paralysed the jail
for about an hour.
Mr Duffy: The whole reason for
that was their perception that they were not being treated the
same as the other side. In response to your question about the
visits, tab 14 has our information.
Q634 Chairman: On 20 October you
wrote to Maguire.
Mr Duffy: That is right.
Q635 Chairman: Have you had a response
to that?
Mr Duffy: No, sir. Any responses
we have are attached to all our letters and they are very few
and far between.
Q636 Chairman: I have not had a chance
to go through this lot yet.
Mr Lewis: There seems to be a
marked reluctance to respond to our communications at this point,
sir. As an Association we are there to represent the staff, but
we perceived that if these people were treated differently they
would react in the same way that they did, because between us
we have 50 years experience of working with people like these.
Mr Duffy: It was 25 years for
me yesterday.
Q637 Chairman: It must seem longer.
Mr Duffy: It does!
Q638 Mr Clarke: You mentioned the
potential problems in fragmentation terms of the Republican/Nationalist
prisoners. History would tell us that there is a more severe problem
in terms of the fragmentation of Loyalist prisoners. Would you
like to put on record your concerns over whether or not the new
accommodation would be able to cope with such a wide number of
different factions?
Mr Duffy: The accommodation has
only got four landings. In the old style houses, which are not
suitable for this type of separation, there are three double landings.
If they break down into their factions there is no way that the
Governor would have enough accommodation for all the known groups
we have. He has no accommodation now for anything else that could
happen. He has an urgent need for a re-build but the re-build
will have to be quite extensive and where is he going to get the
staff if there is any new build, I do not know, but he has to
have that support.
Mr Lewis: History has taught us
that to work with these people you have to turn round the mindset
of "We will intimidate you" and the only way we can
do this is to train the staff properly and adequately who will
be working with these people because, as I am sure Mr Mates has
told you from his experience of Northern Ireland, these people
are geniuses at psychology. They will semi-circle prison officers
on wings and tell you where your children go to school, where
you live, what kind of car your wife drives.
Mr Duffy: The Loyalists have already
started that. While we have said under no circumstances should
their rank structure be recognised, the Loyalists in particular
are bypassing the officer on Bann 1 and 2 and going to the SO;
they have now bypassed the SO and they ask for the day manager
who is the next rank up with two pips on his shoulder and if they
ask for the duty governor the duty governor comes running to them.
If they have a problem the duty governors will take individuals
out, who are their spokespersons, and speak to them. That is the
road to ruin, that is Maze II.
Mr Lewis: They then say to the
prison officer, "I don't want to speak to you, I want to
speak to your senior officer"and they then tell the senior
officer that they are not prepared to speak to him, they want
to speak to the Principal Officer who is the equivalent of an
Inspector in the police. They then refuse to speak to the Principal
Officer and they say, "No, I'm sorry, I want the Governor
down here." As long as you go on allowing the tail to wag
the dog these people are gaining more and more control. What it
took them three or four years to do in Maze they are doing in
three or four months in Maghaberry, it is an accelerated version
of what we watched in the Maze.
Mr Duffy: Mr Leonard—we
know for a fact that this is the case and we have proven it and
everything else in the minutes of meetings—and Jane Kennedy
have agreed on a monthly basis to meet the spokesperson for these
dissident groups. If they cannot improve their campaign and push
it on through the prison system this individual is going to do
it, Marion Price, and he meets her on a monthly basis. We have
five to eight officers in the segregation areas, but you would
have thought if he was going to meet somebody he would meet a
low civil servant, take the messages and then go back and he would
not go face to face with the people who make the decisions. Mr
Leonard has given the name and the mobile number and the home
number of one of our governors as a point of contact in the prison
and that is Governor David Kennedy.
Mr Lewis: So he has received phone
calls from people like Marion Price and is not happy about it.
Mr Duffy: That is going to put
more and more pressure on him, and when all these dissidents see
him any time he is on that landing they say, "You're the
person that can make the decisions. Why aren't you making them?"
We should not be in that situation.
Q639 Chairman: This is a rather long
but very valuable answer to the question of safety. Do you think
safety is not going to be enhanced?
Mr Lewis: We have grave concerns.
Mr Duffy: Safety within the prison
will not be enhanced if we are not properly resourced.
Mr Lewis: We are dealing with
probably one of the most sophisticated groups of terrorists in
the world, with 25 to 30 years of experience of turning society
upside down and these are the hardest of the hard core, the people
who did not want to make peace with anybody, the people who from
both sides of their community who want to keep things going and
want to keep recruiting.
Mr Duffy: Under no circumstances
are they going to recruit prison officers. We have a document
we can give you which is a reference to a trawl going out for
more support officers. They are looking at everywhere outside
the prison wall, moving the prison officers in and having general
support grades to work the outside. That was a failed policy with
auxiliaries, it will be a failed policy here and the reason why
is that if we have a riot we can call on our resources now to
come in and assist us, but we will not have those resources there
to say back us up in the future. If we have an officer who has
been sick or assaulted we can bring them into work on our Return
to Work scheme. Headquarters have admitted that we have reduced
sickness by over 40%. If we do not have that, does sickness increase
by 50% immediately?
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