Examination of Witnesses (Questions 400-419)
MRS JOAN
DOHERTY, MR
JAMES JOSEPH
MCALLISTER
AND MR
CHRISTOPHER "JIMMY"
MCCLEAN
4 JULY 2007
Q400 Chairman: Two days a week, and
what is your gainful employment?
Mr McAllister: I am a station
commander with the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service.
Q401 Chairman: I see, yes. What about
you?
Mrs Doherty: I would probably
give a day, a day and a half a week. I do have contact with the
governor every week, sometimes in the establishment; if not, I
phone him. We do have a regular contact because it is important.
Q402 Chairman: Of course it is, yes.
Mrs Doherty: So it would be, since
I became Chair, certainly a day, a day and a half a week.
Q403 Chairman: And I think you are
a teacher, is that right?
Mrs Doherty: That is right, but
I am retired.
Q404 Chairman: You are retired, yes.
What about you?
Mr McClean: I would spend, Chairman,
between two and three days a week on average. I am retired from
my day job, but I am a lay magistrate and I sit on various tribunals.
Q405 Chairman: I see. What was your
day job?
Mr McClean: I worked for the Post
Office corporation.
Q406 Chairman: Did you? You got out
in time, did you not?
Mr McClean: It is a long time
ago!
Chairman: We are all very grateful that
people as public spirited as you should give this amount of time
to what is a very, very important job.
Q407 Sammy Wilson: Before we move
on, could I ask one question about your role? When we had the
Prisoner Ombudsman along I think he indicated that about 56% of
the complaints which were made to his office were upheld. There
is the prison complaints procedure. You also have a role to play
in complaints. It struck me as rather surprising that 56% of complaints,
even after filtering through the other mechanisms, were still
upheld. Have you any explanation or thoughts as to why, even at
that stage, complaints have not been dealt with properly?
Mrs Doherty: If I look at the
complaints from Magilligan, which is the one I can speak for,
certainly when I monitor the applications which go to the Ombudsman—and
they have already been through the prison system and they have
gone through the IMB system—it is the same people who are
complaining. We have not solved it, and we have tried. It is just
one of those things that are difficult to deal with, but we do
our best and sometimes we have to refer them on to the Ombudsman.
So as regards my board, it is the same people and it is probably
about five to ten inmates who are sending the complaints that
will be upheld.[1]
Mr McClean: I have certainly seen
no reduction in the number of complaints that the Independent
Monitoring Boards would handle. I think perhaps it is because
of the nature of the prisoner population. Most of our prisoners
would be young males and on the whole they are pretty inarticulate
and they would prefer, I think, to come to us verbally and raise
issues. Maybe they do not feel confident enough to raise them
through the formal system and we can deal with them and have them
sorted verbally, if you like.
Mr McAllister: I think in the
case of Maghaberry initially when the Ombudsman's office was set
up complaints dropped, because it was assumed by the prisoner
and by the staff, unfortunately, that we were there to monitor
and not to answer complaints any more. We availed of the rest
period, if you like, and concentrated on areas of responsibility
shared out among the board. We would go onto the landings and
we would glean as much information as possible on those areas.
In doing that, yes, we would run into prisoners on the landings
and yes, the complaints soon came back again, but I think the
realisation is there now again that we are part of the internal
complaints process. There is the IMB and there is the Ombudsman's
office.
Q408 Sammy Wilson: As part of your
monitoring role, the fact that such a high percentage were upheld
and went to the Ombudsman's office, is that an indication that
either the complaints were not dealt with adequately within the
prison system or the monitoring system, or that the Ombudsman's
office is maybe a bit more generous in how they interpret some
of these complaints?
Mr McAllister: Obviously, I cannot
speak to and would not want to cast judgment on the figures presented
by the Ombudsman. However, the Independent Monitoring Board members
do not take statistics of the complaints that we deal with, those
that we uphold and those we are not successful with. We simply
listen to the prisoner and we go to whoever we can. We may go
back to the staff, the landing staff or the principal officer,
we may go to the governor of the house, and so on, and very often
it can be sorted in the morning, it can be something simple, whereas
I think with the Ombudsman there is probably a lot more paperwork
and actual paper trails, et cetera.
Chairman: Thank you very much.
Q409 John Battle: Could I ask each
of you to say a little bit about rehabilitation and resettlement
activities, training and education, preparation for employment,
perhaps specialist provision within each of the prisons, and particularly
whether the proposed change in sentences will affect the provision?
What is the position that you each see?
Mrs Doherty: At the moment in
Magilligan there is a wide range of courses[2]
being offered, both in education and workshops, and the idea is
to prepare the inmates for future employment. "FE" means
business, because my background being in education obviously I
am very keen to see that they will all come out with qualifications.
At the moment we are targeting 78% of the inmates for education
workshops or some provision of training. That provision may be
attending treatment programmes for whatever their problem, sex
offenders' treatment programmes, alcohol addiction and other programmes
like that. I have the figures which I can give you for that if
you wish to have them. We also look at accredited courses and
courses which will be useful to the inmates when they go out.
You do realise that, of course, we have a very high incidence
of poor literacy and poor numeracy and we are addressing that,
or the establishment is addressing that on the essential skills
programme. Magilligan is also looking at the workshop programmes,
so we are not restricting them to those who have literacy and
numeracy difficulties, but we are trying to get them to understand
that they must have a certain level before they can avail themselves
of that training in the various workshops. We are also giving
them a chance of employment in the establishment to put into practice
the qualifications they are getting, be it gardening, industrial
cleaning or catering, and we are preparing them for skills which
they might use outside. We also link with Limavady College of
Further Education and Ballymena College and this past year we
have won an award for innovation with Ballymena College. We are
now looking forward and have already had meetings with the new
north-west regional college, which is the merger of North-West
Institute and Limavady College. We are planning ahead for the
course provision for 1 August when that merger takes place. We
are also with the prison looking at their accreditation of courses,
at other courses which could be provided where maybe inmates could
go out to use the college provision during the summer months when
the students are not there. We do not want double-funding, we
want to talk to DEL about the funding because we have got to look
at value for money. So we have got to look at that and the governor
and I are looking at that at the moment.
Q410 John Battle: I think there was a
question of the physical quality of the workshops?
Mrs Doherty: Yes. The workshops
are in Nissen huts. It is not ideal.
Q411 Chairman: We have seen them.
We were impressed by the quality of the work done there. I think
anybody going to Magilligan comes away with two impressions: the
quality of the work is good and morale is good, but the physical
conditions in which it is done, frankly, are not.
Mrs Doherty: No. You are quite
right, they are not good, but when you can keep morale up and
get work turned out like the inmates are turning out, and they
are now taking pride in the grounds and we have had two new lawnmowers
recently and they are cutting the grass of the grounds as well
as doing the planting.
Q412 Chairman: We saw that too, yes.
Mrs Doherty: Yes, you would have.
They are now making furniture. We have got a new Alpha compound,
which will be open in August. I think when you were there we were
hoping to have it open in June, but it will be open now in mid-August
and the inmates are making all the furniture for that, which is
a saving on the public purse. That money, hopefully, will be put
into the estate.
Q413 Chairman: Good. Would Mr McAllister
and Mr McClean like to deal with Mr Battle's question?
Mr McClean: The vocational training
on offer at Hydebank Wood was originally based on the perceived
needs of male young offenders. The arrival of women prisoners
did not change that. Currently the only vocational training open
to women at Hydebank Wood is horticulture. The IMB has suggested
other training subjects such as professional hairdressing, business
skills, and so on, but the small number of potential trainees
is always put forward as the reason for saying that such courses
are not viable. A lack of interest has also been mentioned, but
I think that is a bit of a red herring. The IMB would recommend
that the vocational training needs of women prisoners should be
properly assessed, bearing in mind that the overall numbers will
always be relatively small and recognising that one-to-one tutoring
might be necessary. I think that some work needs to be done in
exploring the female labour market as well. The vocational training
instructors at Hydebank Wood are direct employees of the Northern
Ireland Prison Service, as I understand it, and in practice if
an instructor goes off sick or is absent for any reason the workshops
remain closed and no training takes place at all. As I see it,
the solution would be to outsource the work to maybe a local college
of further education, as seems to happen in Magilligan, and they
presumably would be able to provide substitute teachers as necessary.
John Battle: Are they broadening the
curriculum for women as well, because it seems a bit restricted
in this day and age, horticulture and hairdressing? Lots of young
women will look to other things.
Q414 Chairman: You do not have hairdressing
at the moment, do you?
Mr McClean: Hairdressing, no.
Q415 Chairman: It is just horticulture?
Mr McClean: Yes. Horticulture
was practised when the women prisoners were housed at Maghaberry
Prison.
Q416 Chairman: We saw them doing
it, yes. They all looked like Charlie Dymock!
Mr McClean: Yes. It is excellent,
but there ought to be a bit more. The young men, for instance,
they have seven different subjects to choose from.
Q417 Sammy Wilson: How much of the
restricted choice is due to the small numbers of prisoners, because
sometimes it is impossible to run a course unless you have got
some basic numbers?
Mr McClean: I think that is the
main reason, the small numbers, but as I say the small number
is always going to be a feature so far as women prisoners are
concerned and it is going to have to be addressed.
Q418 John Battle: Are efforts going
to be made to extend the range of options for young women?
Mr McClean: Yes, even if it means
one-to-one or small groups of maybe one, two or three.
Q419 Mr Murphy: Has anyone asked
the women themselves what sort of course they would like?
Mr McClean: I am not sure. We
have spoken to them informally and I think they would be interested
in something other than horticulture, if they had a choice.
Mr Murphy: I am sure they would, yes.
Stephen Pound: Anything!
1 Supplementary information sent by witness: Last
July there were five complaints to the Ombudsman-four from the
same inmate. Back
2
Supplementary information sent by witness: Further education
means business produced by DEL, Department of Employment and Learning. Back
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