Examination of Witnesses (Questions 382-399)
MRS JOAN
DOHERTY, MR
JAMES JOSEPH
MCALLISTER
AND MR
CHRISTOPHER "JIMMY"
MCCLEAN
4 JULY 2007
Q382 Chairman: Good afternoon. You are
very welcome and thank you for coming. Would you like to just
introduce yourselves and just tell us a little bit about your
respective responsibilities? Are you leading the team, Mr McAllister?
Mr McAllister: I have prepared
a brief covering all three Independent Monitoring Boards generally.
Mrs Doherty: My name is Joan Doherty.
I am Chair of Magilligan. Magilligan is in the north of Northern
Ireland.
Q383 Chairman: Indeed. We have been
there, yes.
Mr McAllister: I am James McAllister.
I am Chairman of Maghaberry Prison.
Q384 Chairman: Yes. We are coming
there next week.
Mr McClean: I am Jimmy McClean,
Chairman of Hydebank Wood Prison.
Q385 Chairman: We have been there,
yes.
Mr McClean: It is a female prison
and a male young offenders' centre.
Q386 Chairman: Yes. We have been
to the female prison and we have passed through it but we have
not really visited the young offenders. You are most welcome.
Over to you, Mr McAllister.
Mr McAllister: If I could begin
with our mission statement, the mission statement for the Independent
Monitoring Board. It is to monitor the quality of prison life
by working to ensure fairness and accountability in prison. The
members of the Independent Monitoring Boards are appointed by
the Secretary of State under the Prison Act (Northern Ireland)
1953. We are volunteers and we are required to visit the prisons
regularly, to report on the conditions of imprisonment and the
treatment of prisoners, to consider requests and complaints made
by prisoners to the Board and report on matters of concern to
the governor, or in serious cases to the Secretary of State. On
our relationship with the Northern Ireland Prison Service, the
Prison Service takes the role of the Independent Monitoring Boards
seriously and this is demonstrated not only in the various lines
of communication established between the governors and senior
management staff within the three establishments but also with
the staff of headquarters, the Director-General and the various
heads of departments at Dundonald House. In monitoring the prisons
each board is required to produce an annual report to the Secretary
of State stating their findings and making recommendations in
areas of concern. The Director-General, Mr Robin Masefield, soon
after the publication of our reports will be invited to our board
meetings to respond to those recommendations. I would hope that
all Members of this Committee are recipients of the annual reports
when they are published. If not, we will ensure that is put right
after this meeting. Representatives of the three establishments
meet every six to eight weeks to discuss matters of concern common
to all three prisons and they also receive an overview from the
Prison Service, from the Director of Operations. Our relationship
then with the Prisoner Ombudsman is that there is no statutory
or formal arrangement setting out the structure or framework for
a relationship between the IMBs and the Prisoner Ombudsman. Nevertheless,
the two offices share much in common in terms of prisoners' rights,
the conditions and regimes to which prisoners and detainees are
subjected, and indeed the conditions and practices which have
a bearing on those visiting those held in prison. They both do
this in part by responding directly to prisoners' complaints.
There is at present work ongoing in setting up a protocol on working
arrangements between both parties. The Independent Monitoring
Boards are supportive in their work by the secretariat housed
on the 22nd Floor of Windsor House in Belfast. This service was
previously provided by the Northern Ireland Office based at Dundonald
House. To coincide with the name change from the Board of Visitors
to the Independent Monitoring Board the secretariat service was
moved to the office of the Prisoner Ombudsman in order to underline
its independence from the Prison Service. Initially, the move
worked well. However, over the past year difficulties have arisen
in relation to service provision and the independence. There is
a perception among prisoners and prison staff alike that the IMB
is a branch of the Ombudsman's office. Although there are some
similarities in the work of both offices and there is a necessity
to work together in areas of mutual concern, it is crucial to
the Independent Monitoring Boards that we are not only independent
but that we are seen to be independent.
Q387 Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed. Can I just follow up one or two things? First of all,
the size of your boards?
Mr McAllister: Maghaberry, being
the biggest establishment in the prison estate in Northern Ireland,
has an establishment of 20 board members.
Mrs Doherty: I have 18 members.
Mr McClean: Our complement is
15. I have had one deceased member and four new members from January
this year.
Q388 Chairman: Thank you. Your members
are appointed normally for a three year period?
Mrs Doherty: Yes.
Mr McAllister: Initially for three
years, but to serve not more than 12 years.
Q389 Chairman: And attendance is
good at the boards, is it?
Mrs Doherty: Yes.
Mr McAllister: Attendance is excellent.
Mr McClean: I am finding difficulty
with some younger members who have got a day job to attend. They
find it difficult to make the time to attend our monthly meetings.
Q390 Chairman: Is that a serious
problem?
Mr McClean: It is early days.
It could become a serious problem.
Q391 Chairman: Is that because your
board is particularly youthful?
Mr McClean: In the past it tended
to be the more senior members of the community, but in the last
recruitment we managed to get three younger members in their twenties
and thirties. But as I say, they are in the early stages of their
careers and they find it difficult to actually get the time off.
Q392 Chairman: Do you have any problems
of that sort, either of you?
Mrs Doherty: No. My age range
is from 23 upwards to probably 70 and I do not have any problems
with attendance.
Mr McAllister: I do believe I
am the youngest member of our board, but I have to say the board
of Maghaberry attends meetings very regularly.
Q393 Chairman: What is the age range
on your board?
Mr McAllister: The age range would
be from a young 46 and I think our oldest member is close on 80.
Q394 Chairman: Very good, and do
you have a reasonable balance between male and female members
of your boards?
Mr McAllister: It is almost 50:50,
yes.
Q395 Chairman: Excellent. You have
talked about this problem of being perceived to be part of the
Ombudsman's outfit because of the shared premises. First of all,
are the secretarial facilities that you receive adequate for your
needs?
Mr McAllister: We feel at the
moment that they are not. We feel that there has been a lessening
of the service provision since we moved. Initially, as I said,
to coincide with the movement of the name change from the Board
of Visitors to the Independent Monitoring Board the initial set-up
was excellent, but unfortunately with a change of staff in the
Ombudsman's office the service declined. There are constant efforts
to try and establish the service level agreement between the two,
but I think there is a difficulty there in that initially the
Prisoner Ombudsman's workload was high because it was a new office
and therefore the secretariat to the Independent Monitoring Boards
suffered because staff would have been pulled to work for the
Ombudsman.
Q396 Chairman: Do you think this
problem is a temporary transitional problem, or do you think that
the only sensible solution is for you to have separate premises?
Mr McAllister: Ideally, and for
the sake of total independence, we would like complete independence.
We would like a separation. However, it is possible that it can
be worked out. I say it is possible: we are not seeing the light
at the end of the tunnel at this moment in time. There is a lot
of difficult meetings happening and there is a lot of difficult
issues to be solved.
Q397 Chairman: Are they difficulties
of administration and personal relationships, or are they just
administrative?
Mr McAllister: There is a little
of both. Obviously, I would like to be careful in what I say on
that, but what we are finding is that the secretariat is not proactive.
If I can give you an example, I received an email yesterday afternoon
about preparing a briefing for today's meeting. Now, I know that
the secretariat received that information on Monday and we are
getting it on Tuesday afternoon. Bearing in mind that we are volunteers
and bearing in mind that we have other lives—we have our
work, our families and other commitments—we need the information
up front. We need our secretariat to be proactive.
Q398 Chairman: Of course you do,
yes. I rather infer from what you are saying that you feel you
are being treated a little bit as the poor relation here?
Mrs Doherty: Yes.
Mr McAllister: Very much so.
Q399 Chairman: It is very good to
have that on the record because it is something we would want
to take into account. Before I move the questioning on to my colleagues,
could you just tell me one other thing? You are volunteers, we
know that. You do not receive any payment for what you are doing
and therefore you are performing a very valuable public service,
for which we are extremely grateful. How much of your time does
this take? I know you cannot be exact, but as the three chairmen
do you give the equivalent of a day a week to this, or would it
be more like two days a month? What are we talking of?
Mr McAllister: I would say in
my own case—and I will let the others speak—taking
on the role of chair I would be giving maybe two days per week.
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