Ms Emily Logan:

I thank the Chairman. I welcome the opportunity to address the committee on the issue of youth justice. Given my direct accountability to the Oireachtas as Ombudsman for Children, it is appropriate to raise my concerns with this committee on the detention of young people in Oberstown and the transition from using St. Patrick's Institution as a place of detention for 16 and 17 year old boys. I understand that the committee has had occasion to discuss the detention of children in Oberstown with the chair of the board of the detention schools.

In addition to our presentation today we have set out a chronology of the actions of our office. It is appendixed so the committee members can see the actions our office has taken in this regard since its inception in 2005. I will place my comments in context with some background. When the Oireachtas passed the Children Act in 2001, it put in place a modern youth justice framework incorporating a number of fundamental children’s rights principles. These include the need to divert young people away from the criminal justice system as much as possible, the use of community-based sanctions and using detention as a measure of last resort.

I acknowledge the most recent action taken by the director of the Irish Prison Service and the Minister for Justice and Equality in closing St. Patrick’s Institution. Although this is a very welcome development, we must not forget that calls to close St. Patrick’s Institution have been made for more than 28 years dating back to the Whitaker report in 1985. In 2009, our office took the unusual step of consulting with 35 people under the age of 18 in St. Patrick’s Institution to find out their experience. This was unusual in the sense that the Ombudsman for Children Act at that time did not allow for me to accept complaints from children in St. Patrick's. However, an alternative provision of the Act gave me the authority to consult with any group of children and young people and to highlight matters of concern to children and young people.

It was abundantly clear to me when my team and I talked to the young people in St. Patrick’s in 2009 that the problem was not merely one of accommodation, but a culture that was detrimental to the young people detained there. I had no previous personal experience of prisons before entering St. Patrick’s. I found it a very oppressive environment and the tension between the young people and some staff was palpable. It felt like an intimidating environment for the young people. I recall the expressions of fear and anxiety from some young people very vividly. Some of the children reported feeling unsafe, cold and hungry.

One described being locked up for 23 hours in a cell on protection and described the cell as: "F...king freezing! A padded wall, no clothes, only a pair of Y-fronts... for days."

At the conclusion of the project, I called for the closure of the prison as a place of detention for young people. There was further questioning by international monitors of children's rights, namely, the UN Committee Against Torture and the Council of Europe, on the findings of our report and the conditions in St. Patrick’s Institution. We must reflect on why it has taken 28 years to finally get to the point of closing an institution described by the chaplains as a monument to State failure.

The 2012 report of the Inspector of Prisons, Judge Michael Reilly, published earlier this month, also found very disturbing incidents of non-compliance with human rights standards. For example, one prisoner who had been moved to St. Patrick’s Institution that day was in a cold and dirty cell where the toilet was filled with excrement. The inspector found the young person crying in bed because he had been refused permission to make a telephone call to his father. He described the prisoner as afraid. I hope that as we move to a new era of youth justice in Ireland with the closure of St. Patrick’s Institution, we will also see an end to the culture of disbelief when faced with such accounts.

The Government has decided that Wheatfield Prison will be used in the interim to accommodate 17 year olds. I visited Wheatfield Prison last week and met the governor and director of the Irish Prison Service to discuss the proposed move. It appeared to me the facilities and, more importantly, the culture in Wheatfield Prison are significantly better than those in St. Patrick’s Institution. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that irrespective of the conditions obtaining in the prison, we are moving children from one prison to another. Wheatfield is an adult prison, and an adult prison is no place for any child under the age of 18.

I referred to St. Patrick's Institution because it is significant with regard to getting young people out of prison that the Oberstown project is progressed. Oberstown is designed to be a children’s detention school rather than a prison. The difference is that in a custodial environment one is locked up, but in a detention school children should receive therapeutic intervention and education which will enable them to return as active members of our communities. When the Minister for Justice and Equality established the Thornton Hall project review group in 2011, I made a number of recommendations to it. These recommendations included moving 16 and 17 year old boys to Oberstown on a phased basis to afford staff the opportunity to become accustomed to the new cohort of young people; to put in place a project manager to oversee the transition, ensure the project happens and act as a link between St. Patrick’s Institution and Oberstown; and to enhance the skills and capacity of staff in Oberstown as part of the transition.

One of the reasons I emphasised the importance of putting in place a project manager and examining staff capacity was that I was aware of industrial relations issues identified in Oberstown at the time. A further industrial relations challenge arose when the decision was made last year to begin detaining 16 year old children in Oberstown. I received a solicitor’s letter on behalf of a group of staff in Oberstown setting out their concerns regarding this move, to which the group of staff in question was opposed. The main concern set out in the letter I received was that staff in Oberstown were not trained to deal with 16 and 17 year old boys. In light of the concern expressed to me regarding the capacity of staff in Oberstown, I was disappointed to read in the most recent annual report of the inspector of prisons that a proposed initiative to have care staff from the detention schools work alongside prison staff in St. Patrick’s Institution was not facilitated. The skills gained from such a period of work could perhaps have addressed some of the concerns outlined to me regarding staff capacity in Oberstown.

A further concern has come to my attention in the past week regarding the reorganisation of existing units in Oberstown. This change has arisen from the need for a greater number of beds for boys than had been anticipated. As the committee is aware, this matter recently entered the public domain as a number of judges were unable to remand boys to detention due to a lack of space on the particular days in question. The concerns raised with me about the girl in detention in Oberstown are that her mobility and recreational opportunities are restricted. The young person in question is not going to be able to have the type of life she should because she is the only girl in a campus of teenage boys.

I am a pragmatist by nature and I am not opposed to pragmatic solutions to capacity problems in Oberstown, but such solutions must not come at the expense of young people’s well-being or the need to observe the relevant care standards. We must take care not to place institutional interests ahead of the interests of children.

I do not wish to give an entirely negative assessment of the current situation. It is only fair to say the improvement in youth justice has accelerated under the Government due to four key efforts, namely, capital investment in the Oberstown facility; the fact that since May last year 16 year old boys are no longer sent to prisons; the extension of the investigative remit of the Office of the Ombudsman for Children since July 2012; and the closure of St. Patrick’s Institution. All of these are significant developments which should make young people’s experience of detention much less intimidating. I have never suggested anything other than that young people who commit crimes must pay the price, which is the loss of their liberty, and beyond this a sentence is not to instil a sense of fear in any child or young person.

I hope the momentum will be maintained and Members of the Oireachtas have an important role to play in this regard as legislators creating a more modern youth justice system. It is important that we continue to monitor it. The roadmap for the development of a child-based youth justice system was set out by the Houses in the Children Act 2001. The current reforms are an integral part of realising this vision and ensuring children will not be detained in a prison. I trust the committee will continue its engagement with the key stakeholders in this area to ensure the reform process does not falter.