Fr. Peter McVerry:

I thank members for the opportunity to address them. I visit the prisons on a regular basis. I spend most of my weekends in the prisons and I spend my time meeting prisoners, so that is the perspective I am coming from. I would have no hesitation in saying that from that perspective, our present prison system is a total disaster.

The mission statement of the Irish Prison Service is to provide safe and secure custody, dignity of care and rehabilitation to prisoners for safer communities. The only word in that which is actually appropriate is "secure". Our prisons are not safe. There is very little dignity of care and there is very little rehabilitation for the majority of prisoners. I refer to something in the report by the Inspector of Prisons on St. Patrick's Institution which is very instructive about the attitude towards prisoners. He said he found that the prisoners there, who were not allowed to wear their own clothes, were wearing prison clothes which were ill-fitting, torn, had holes in them and were dirty. To give prisoners clothes like that is a symptom of the attitude that exists towards prisoners - they are of no value. There is no respect for the prisoners and the majority of prisoners feel that. Even though there are some wonderful prison officers who really care and who try very hard, the system itself communicates a total lack of respect and care for prisoners.

The most fundamental problem in the prisons is overcrowding. Until that is addressed, it is extremely difficult to deal with the other serious issues such as rehabilitation, drug misuse and violence in our prisons. For example, when Wheatfield Prison opened in 1989, it was a model prison. It had 320 cells for 320 prisoners and it had constructive activity for almost all of those 320 prisoners. Then it started putting bunk beds into the cells. Most cells in Wheatfield are double now. The number of prisoners rose to 500. A new extension was opened and the number rose to more than 700, but not one single extra classroom or workshop was built. That is a symptom of the way the prison system has been going. We could now describe the prison system as a warehousing of prisoners. As long as the problem of overcrowding exists, it is difficult to deal with other problems.

The Irish Prison Service has repeatedly stated that it does not have control over the number of people going into prison. I accept that, but it does have control over the number of people coming out of prison. One thing we could do immediately, which was recommended by the Whitaker committee in 1985, is to introduce one third remission. I would go further, but politically that may not be possible. One third remission for good behaviour would immediately free up a considerable number of spaces. It is not a hugely radical proposal. In the UK, which is hardly a model of good penal policy for us, there is 50% remission, but during that 50% remission time one is under the supervision of a probation officer and can be recalled to prison if the supervision breaks down.

Approximately 80% of the people going into our prisons have an addiction problem and for many of them, that is the reason they are there. One way to ensure people do not go to prison is to deal with their addiction problems in the community. There are various ways to do that. The drug court is a small example but it is very limited. Nevertheless, if addiction facilities within the community are better, fewer people will eventually have to go to prison. Within the prison system itself, there are nine detox beds for 4,500 prisoners, most of whom have an addiction problem. There are very few drug-free spaces in our prisons for those who are drug free. I personally know about 40 people - the number grows every month - who never touched a drug before they went into prison but came out addicted to heroin. They may be sharing a cell with a heroin user or they may be living within a drugs culture. The boredom and monotony of prison life, because there is very little for most prisoners to do, drives people to using drugs just to escape from that boredom.

There is a proposal - the Irish Prison Service may be thinking about this - that the medical unit in Mountjoy Prison, which is capable of accommodating maybe 50 to 60 prisoners, should be designated as a drug detox centre. When people have completed their drug detox, the training unit would be one option. They would move to an intensive rehabilitation programme in the training unit and from there they would be released on a phased basis, perhaps into day treatment programmes in the community. If we could deal effectively with the addiction problems of people going into prison, we would reduce the numbers going into prison enormously.

In regard to rehabilitation, there are excellent school and training facilities in most of our prisons but they are available only to a tiny proportion of prisoners at any one time. The profile of prisoners is well documented. They have low levels of literacy, are early school leavers, have few qualifications or skills, have a poor employment history and sometimes have a history of homelessness or mental health issues. We have an opportunity in prison, particularly for those serving longer sentences of 12 months or more, to try to address some of those deficiencies, but for the majority of prisoners it just does not happen, as they do not have access. They may have access to the school one morning per week and they may have access to a training programme one morning a week. The statistics we get from the Irish Prison Service are hopelessly unreliable. It will talk about 58% of prisoners attending school. That could mean attending school one morning per week but being idle and bored the rest of the time. It will talk about a certain number of prisoners attending a particular workshop, but if one goes to the workshop one finds that only a quarter of the prisoners who are supposed to be attending are actually there because it does not have the required number of staff due to the embargo on recruitment. Rehabilitation in an overcrowded prison becomes virtually impossible.

Integrated sentence management is the best thing I have heard of but, in reality and despite all the hype, it is not happening. The Irish Prison Service will attack me on that but, basically, it is not happening. If it is, it is happening for a tiny number of people. It has huge potential but it is not happening.

Putting people into 23 hour lock-up, as a huge number are, to keep them safe is inhumane.

If one locked a dog in a cell for 23 hours a day, one would be reported to the ISCPA. It is just inhumane. I know prisoners who spent three or four years on 23 hour lock-up and were psychologically and emotionally disturbed when they came out of prison. It can only be damaging to a person. We cannot deal with the problem of violence until we deal with the overcrowding issue. Therefore, we are condemned to putting people into prison cells for 23 hours. The prison system is a disaster. A root and branch reform of attitudes, policies and procedures is needed.