No matter how badly off we are, we should be able to do better by our young offenders, writes BREDA O'BRIEN
TOMORROW IS Universal Children’s Day. In the Christian churches of Britain and Ireland, it is also Prisoner Sunday. Not much overlap there, you might say. Sadly, you would be wrong.
In 2010, there were 221 children aged 16 and 17 committed to prison, including two girls. The 219 boys ended up in St Patrick’s Institution, which is a medium security prison for young males aged 16 to 21.
Children’s Ombudsman Emily Logan has been heavily critical of incarcerating children in institutions that also imprison adults. She is hardly alone.
A report by the Office of the Children’s Ombudsman (OCO) lists nine different groups or official bodies that have criticised St Patrick’s, including everyone from the Irish Prison Chaplains to the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
Let me add one. The Whitaker commission recommended the immediate closure of St Patrick’s in 1985.
It is official Government policy to move children to the long- promised National Children’s Detention Centre at Oberstown in Lusk. As yet another consequence of our economic thralldom, those plans have been put on hold.
Advocacy officer of the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice Eoin Carroll points out that we are talking about 60 children at any one time, of whom up to 20 can be on “protection”, meaning that they are locked up for 20 to 22 hours a day.
Unsurprisingly, he called for the immediate reinstatement of the capital budget for Oberstown, “if the State is to show commitment to providing a humane, child-centred environment”.
Sadly, that is unlikely to happen any time soon. If plan A is on hold, what exactly is plan B? Emily Logan has suggested as an interim measure that the practice of holding children who are on remand in St Patrick’s should stop immediately.
The detention centres currently only used for under-16s would be the obvious place to send children on remand who are over that age.
Places like Trinity House are a stark contrast to the Dickensian conditions in St Pat’s. The regime in St Pat’s is a replica of an adult prison routine, with one added twist. The prisoners are not allowed to wear their own clothes.
In fact, if they end up in the special observation cell known by inmates as “the pad”, they only get to wear a pair of underpants, and they can be locked in there for 23 hours.
The 2007 prison rules are absolutely clear that the special observation cell should never be used except to prevent harm to the prisoner or to others, a prison doctor must be involved and it never should be used as further punishment.
The ombudsman report, Young People in St Patrick’s Institution, says that the young prisoners are unaware of this and regard “the pad” with fear.
No doubt by now, the usual suspects will be muttering that we are not talking about children, but scumbags who need even tougher treatment, not molly-coddling.
Certainly, these 16- and 17-year- olds are among the most difficult and dysfunctional in the State.
They come from poor and often deeply dysfunctional homes. Typically, they may have learning difficulties and almost certainly dropped out of school without any qualification. Many of them have already been in care and have significant mental health and alcohol or drug problems.
In short, this child represents most of our worst nightmares, all in one undernourished body.
If human compassion can’t move us, though, pragmatism should. Locking them up already costs the State a fortune. Resource teaching in primary school and intensive intervention with families could only be cheaper.
Those interventions are already too late for the prisoners, but unless we want them to become repeat offenders, leading short, desperate, miserable lives that inflict misery on many others, we have to do more than just pay lip service to rehabilitation.
The Irish Youth Justice Service through the juvenile liaison officers do sterling work diverting young people from crime. They operate a restorative justice conference scheme, where a victim can speak directly to a child about the hurt and harm that they have caused.
In some cases, there is an agreement that the child will compensate the victim or do something positive for the community.
Surely to God we could expand the role of the liaison officers to keep young people out of prison, even when they are convicted? Surely restorative justice would be of far more benefit to everyone?
Emily Logan was also at pains to point out that many of the staff in St Pat’s, particularly those who teach basic skills like cooking, go far beyond the call of duty in the care they give these kids.
The problem is that they should not be there in the first place. These children get one 15- minute visit a day if they are on remand. Sentenced offenders are entitled to one 30-minute visit a week. Many families live too far away to visit. Emily Logan told me of some of these so-called scumbags crying at night because they miss their mammies.
They may be tough, hardened, scary individuals on the outside, and some of them have done very nasty things, but on the inside, they are just kids. No matter how broke we are, surely we can do better by them.