Nearly half of the offenders held in Trinity House end up in adult prisons within six months of their release. Yet it is one of the few links in the disjointed juvenile justice system that seems to be working, writes Carl O'Brien, Social Affairs Correspondent
Richard Murphy is showing off his arm. There are four large capital letters tattooed proudly along it, spelling the name of the girl who has changed his life forever. L-E-A-H. His two-year-old daughter. The little girl sleeping soundly beside him on the couch where he sits.
"I had to get my act together when she arrived," says Murphy (20). "It changed everything. I haven't gone near a drug since, I've stopped heavy drinking. I'm a lot more content with myself." It's a remarkable change. Since the age of eight, Murphy's life has been a chaotic blur of endless arrests, court appearances, remands, hostels and detention centres.
The moment he was back with his friends in Mayfield, Cork city, it would start all over again. He was robbing cars, stealing jewellery, drifting into fights, getting stoned and inevitably getting caught. And that was the way he seemed destined to stumble through life: committing crime with the same muddled inadequacy as he and his friends handled their lives.
But in the chaos there were a few moments of clarity. Like lying awake at night on his own in a locked bedroom of Trinity House, a detention centre for young offenders. Or when a friend of his was killed in a knife attack.
But the biggest wake-up call of them all was the birth of Leah, two years ago. "I had a lot of time to reflect on things inside there," he says. "When I met Shireen [ his girlfriend] and she became pregnant, it all hit home. They're the most important things in my life now."
Set in the countryside of Lusk, Co Dublin, is Trinity House, the State's most secure unit for young offenders. It provides residential accommodation for up to 24 of the most seriously disturbed young male offenders. The children convicted of offences are committed for anything between two and four years.
The pattern is depressingly familiar: almost two-thirds of the boys are from the poorest parts of Dublin, the rest are from major cities and towns around the country. They are usually from a broken home, have dropped out of school and built up a substantial number of criminal charges.
By the time they arrive in Trinity House they have usually spent time in residential centres or hostels runs by local health authorities. In many ways, Trinity is the final chance for a young person to mend their ways before entering the adult prison system.
Michael Donnellan, the director of Trinity House, has an old book of Fr Browne photographs taken in the 1930s and 1940s. "When you look back then we had 5,000 children in reform and industrial schools," he says. "Today we have less than 80. That's an incredible change over the last 50 years. That says a lot about how society has moved on. Wealth and resources had a lot to do with that."
THE NUMBER MAY be smaller but the challenges are still daunting. For most of the young people it is their first experience of a structured, disciplined environment. Added to that, many of the teenagers have severe emotional and behavioural problems.
"There is a recklessness to kids at that age. At 15, you don't worry about what you'll be doing in a year or two. We try to help them focus, reflect on where they are, facing up to what they've done, and move on."
Murphy was eight years old the first time he was brought home by gardaí. He had just stolen a book on sex from Vibes and Scribes in Cork city. He didn't know what it was about - it was just one of the most expensive books there. Murphy's dad thought the whole episode was funny. "He thought it was hilarious. I was young, so of course then I thought it was funny myself."
The next thing he stole was a tray of gold rings from a jeweller on Maylor Street. He sold the set for £5. When his dad found out, he went mad, Murphy says. He couldn't believe he had sold them for only a fiver. "It was a mad atmosphere at home. There were parties. Neighbours would be complaining and gardaí would call to the house. I'd be up until 5am. I could do anything. I thought it was great." That year his brothers and sisters were taken into health board care.
Murphy passed through a number of foster families. By the time he got back to Cork city a year or two later, he started where he had left off. "I was brought to the Children's Court loads of times, but there were never any places. I was out gallivanting, stealing cars, getting into trouble. Sometimes you'd need the money, other times it was just for fun." By the age of 14 he was sent to an assessment centre in Dublin for 14 months which, he says, was a disaster. "I learned a lot of bad stuff there," he says. "You were just watched in there. It was like a big baby-sitting operation. There was no structure to the day."
When, at the age of 15, Murphy was sent to Trinity House, he suddenly felt frightened. As he was brought into the complex with its locked doors and secure setting, he realised he was entering into something else entirely.
"I was bricking it. I didn't think I'd ever get locked up. I kept to myself a lot at the start. After a while I realised it was different. The staff there respected you. They're the only people that helped me. I wouldn't be sitting here today if it wasn't for them. There was structure in the day, the attitude of people was better. They'd talk to you, one on one. When you're in your room at night, thinking, you realise they're there to help you."
In the disjointed world of the juvenile justice system, most experts agree that Trinity House and other reform schools are one of the few links in the chain that seem to be working. But the figures for the school, where the annual cost of keeping a boy was €246,752 in 2002, are hardly encouraging.
In 2002 nearly half of the 57 teenagers who were released from Trinity House that year ended up in adult prisons within six months of their release, three were in residential care with a health board, two were homeless and one had returned to Trinity House. The whereabouts of two were unknown. Latest figures about to be published are understood to show a similar pattern.
"It's too early to say within a year or two whether the kids are successes or failures. A lot of kids don't cope independently until they're 23 or 24, yet we expect these kids to make it at 17 or 18," says Donnellan. "For some their rite of passage is skewed. For some kids, going to university is what they expect, yet for these kids prison is where they expect to go."
FOR THE FIRST three months the children are not allowed out of Trinity House. After this there are occasional outdoor activities, such as rock climbing or night hikes. The better behaved get to earn privileges as time goes on. There is also a big focus on education and catching up on what are often massive gaps in their education. Classes are held between 9.30am and 3pm, with a focus on carpentry and metalwork. Many do their Junior Certificate, with some of the children displaying their results on the bedroom doors.
One of the reasons Trinity House seems to work, says Fr Peter McVerry, a campaigner for young homeless people, is that the staff are properly trained. "It's not like with the high-support units or residential centres, where they aren't properly trained or qualified a lot of the time. The staff also seem happy there, you don't have the same level of turnover you'd have elsewhere."
For all the benefits and structure of Trinity House, the cliff-face drop which faces many young people when they return to the community can undo much of the good that has been done. Trinity House has started its own form of aftercare through its step-down unit, which keeps track of former residents and helps them out where possible. But health authorities, say those working in the field, are often slow to intervene to provide support and services for the children, or else the services simply are not available.
"Health boards are regularly invited to attend three-month reviews of children in custody, but they frequently don't come," says Pól Ó Murchú, a solicitor who specialises in juvenile justice. "They are the agency mandated to provide aftercare, but it's often not provided, either because they themselves are not adequately resourced or aren't trained in that regard."
Donnellan adds that there are bigger issues to be dealt with in dealing with juvenile crime. "This [ Trinity House] isn't necessarily the answer. The real answers are about building stronger communities and diverting resources into youth programmes and diversion programmes. All signs are that outcomes in the residential sector are limited."
A spokeswoman for the Health Service Executive acknowledges the support system for these children is under pressure from a "large and varied caseload". It will be looking at ways of improving the situation, she adds.
In his tiny one-room flat, 20-year-old Anthony O'Shea leans back on to his bed, looks around and shrugs. "I'm not into petty crime anymore. Now, it doesn't mean that if there's a chance of making a fair few bob doing something I'll say no," he says, his face creasing into a mischievous smile.
O'Shea was sentenced to Trinity House for two years. From Dublin's north inner city, he followed the same route as many others: a difficult family background, dropping out of school, drifting deeper and deeper into crime. His short fuse and attention deficit disorder didn't help him either.
"I hit a teacher with a chain - I thought he was a bastard, always shouting at me. One day I lost it. I had a chain in me bag and I went after him. They expelled me after that."
His time in Trinity House wasn't trouble-free by any means. One day, when asked to clean up a spilled yogurt, he flew into such a rage that he threw a new TV on the ground, smashing it. He'd also get into fights with other youngsters he didn't get on with.
"It was when I had around six or seven months to go that something inside me clicked. I was mad, out of control when I went in, always being put on separation," he says. "I realised they were trying to help. They'd trust you after a while. I even got a job driving the lawnmower by the end."
There wasn't much support in the community when he got out, he says. He still hasn't left the chaos of his old life behind. He's still losing his head, still brushing with the law and still accumulating charges - the latest was for assaulting an off-duty prison officer.
Change sometimes comes in small steps. After living at home in his mother's two-bedroom corporation flat in Dublin's north inner city, he's been through a succession of hostels and B&Bs and is now out on his own for the first time, paying €80 a week rent.
THE ROOM ISN'T much bigger than the cell in Cloverhill, he jokes, nodding at the sink, oven and TV crammed into the corner of the room. It's 12 months since he was last in prison for a series of bench warrants. For now he's hoping to avoid going back. It can be hard to stay out of trouble, hanging around with your old friends, but he tries his best. "I just want to get the next few charges cleared. I'm back in court tomorrow over the prison officer assault and a breach of the peace. But I'm looking around for work, maybe in metalwork or carpentry."
Murphy, meanwhile, is making remarkable progress. While he fell into a drink and drugs-fuelled depression when he got out of Trinity House, meeting his girlfriend Shireen was a big turning point. "When I met Shireen, we hit it off. It took a while before we went out. Now my whole life has changed. The child and my girlfriend are the most important things in my life. And getting my life back on track. Helping other kids, I'd like to be able to do that, maybe in somewhere like Trinity House. I've been through it so I know what it's like."
Now living in a neatly-kept two-bedroom terraced house in Dundalk, he's preparing to go back into education, finish his Leaving Cert and get a job. In the meantime he's delighted to do things such as bringing Leah to the park and enjoying his freedom.
"I'm dying to go to work," he says. "I never thought I'd be in this position. I know what I want to do, and I'll do it. I know I can."