In many different spheres, positive changes that had been debated for years and even dismissed as unworkable were introduced virtually overnight during the pandemic. That was certainly true in the Irish prison system. With commendable speed, the authorities moved to make prisons safer by releasing 10 per cent of all prisoners within a month. The majority of those had been serving a sentence of less than 12 months and were described as low risk. The decision did not compromise public safety – only 6 per cent were returned to prison – but it significantly enhanced prison authorities’ ability to adopt effective infection control measures. The result was that there were no Covid-19 cases in prisons during the first lockdown, and the prison system won praise for its handling of the pandemic.
The first challenge for the prison network as it emerges from the crisis is to maintain the reformist tempo it set in the past two years. Technological innovations introduced in that period included the rollout of video calls as a substitute for prison visits; in-cell telephones for cocooning and isolating prisoners; and virtual classrooms to enable prisoners to continue their education. These showed that positive changes can be made when political will exists. In particular, as the Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT) argues in a report on the Covid response, the rapid reduction in prison numbers presents an opportunity to "radically rethink" responses to less serious offending.
Transparency is an essential component of a properly-functioning, human rights-compliant prison service
In some areas, however, progress went into reverse during the pandemic. Restrictions meant the rehabilitative purpose of imprisonment was "vastly diminished", as the IPRT notes. Also of concern is that prison inspection and monitoring appears to have been paused during the crisis. Unlike many other countries, which managed to maintain some form of external oversight, not a single inspection or monitoring report was published in Ireland during the pandemic. In England and Wales, parliamentary committees helped to fill the gap by scrutinising pandemic-related prison measures on an ongoing basis, but in Ireland there is no evidence of any such oversight.
Concern over inadequate scrutiny should be all the greater given signs even before the pandemic that external monitoring of life in Irish prisons was weakening. Visiting committee reports are short, formulaic and offer little insight into the institutions they purport to monitor. The prison inspectorate is a useful structure but its last report on a prison was published five years ago. Successive ministers for justice have accepted the idea that prisoners should have access to the Ombudsman but none has actually introduced that right.
Transparency is an essential component of a properly-functioning, human rights-compliant prison service. It’s a cause for alarm that, in Ireland, it appears to be getting harder to see exactly what goes on behind those high walls.