Mr. Warren Graham:

I thank everyone for the opportunity to speak today on the topic of rehabilitation in Irish prisons. I have now spent over a third of my life in prison and throughout that time, I have personally been transformed. The values and ideologies of my youth have been supplanted through education and an in-depth knowledge of myself and my past. It has not been easy; education has inflicted on me the pains associated with knowledge. For some scholars, it was almost inevitable that a guy like me would wind up in prison. Michel Foucault states that “expert opinion shows how the individual already resembles his crime before he has committed it”. When I look around the prison estate, I see too many people who resemble me; people from areas like mine who share the values I once had and people who have grown up almost completely excluded from society. So when I ponder over the concept of rehabilitation, I cannot help but feel that it is targeted at the people who are unfortunate to have been born into these areas. Nonetheless I have wholeheartedly engaged in rehabilitation over the course of my prison term mainly through education, while also attending many psychology and probation sessions, though to say that I have reformed is quite vague. My mother would state that I have not changed and that the man I am now is the man she knew I would be. The change, she says, happened prior to my crime when I spiralled downwards as a result of my criminal lifestyle.

Studying criminology and sociology at third level has enabled me to see my life from the experts' position and using their opinions and theories I have seen that prison is often considered as containment for the purpose of retribution, not rehabilitation. I see this in Irish prisons. I see that some people are considered no-hope, beyond reach and are merely in prison to serve out their time. They are released and return again continuing the same vicious cycle for the duration of their life. But are they beyond reach and whose fault is it that they do not or cannot change? I have seen that sooner or later, they grow tired of prison and would give anything to have a quiet life. If the purpose of prison is revenge, then it does work because sooner or later we will regret our choices in life especially when our future is that of a former criminal with a history of convictions and no chance of employment.

Rehabilitation is only available and applicable when everybody supports it. Society needs to want it. Prisoners need to be given the opportunity to re-engage in society. Without the correct supports in society, anything that the prison can do is wasted upon release. Too many prisoners struggle beyond prison with the stigma of been a former prisoner. Some recent initiatives such as the Mountjoy-Maynooth University partnership, as well as the social enterprise schemes had seemed promising prior to the pandemic. I hope that they will be restarted as soon as possible. There are so many capable workers leaving prison on a daily basis in tandem with the calls from various sectors looking for workers. If you give these guys a chance, I believe they will prove they are capable of making good. I personally believe that a strong majority of prisoners would make the most of a decent second chance.