Leading British expert on women in prison expresses dismay at direction of Irish policy

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Leading British expert on women in prison speaking at Jesuit Seminar expresses dismay at direction of Irish policy

21 May 2008

Embargoed until 6.00 p.m. Thursday, 22 May 2008


A leading expert on women in prison has expressed dismay at the direction of Irish penal policy which will see a doubling in the number of prison places for women in coming years. Baroness Jean Corston, former Labour MP for Bristol and a life peer, said at a seminar in Dublin, “My essential message is that I would be very sad to see the Irish Government implementing the kind of policy which has failed in the UK and which we are now trying to unscramble.”

Baroness Corston is the author of the Corston Report, a review of women with particular vulnerabilities in the criminal justice system in England and Wales, and she was speaking at a seminar, “Women in Prison: The Need for a Critical Review”, which was organised by the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice and hosted by the Bar Council.

Baroness Corston said her review had highlighted that many women prisoners had serious mental health, addiction and other problems and that they should not be in a closed prison. She had concluded that community sanctions should become the norm for most women offenders, that imprisonment should be used only for serious or violent offenders, and that existing women’s prisons should be replaced by small custodial centres, providing a range of rehabilitative services.
 
Fr Tony O’Riordan SJ, Director of the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, described as “state vandalism” the proposal to close and demolish the Dóchas Centre, built at a cost of 13 million punts and opened only in 1999. He said that the plan to move the Centre to Thornton Hall has been put in train without any serious consideration of the impact of the relocation on the women prisoners and their families or on the prisoners’ access to support and rehabilitative services. He added that the plan also provides for increasing the number of places in the Centre from 85 to 170. This, and the building of a new prison with 40 places for women at Kilworth, Co. Cork, will mean that the number of places for women prisoners will rise to over 210 – four times the capacity in the early 1990s.

“These far-reaching policy decisions regarding the imprisonment of women are being pursued in the absence of any in-depth analysis of the situation of women who come into conflict with the law, or any serious examination of the scope for using non-custodial sentences”, Fr O’Riordan said.  He noted also that the decision to locate the Centre to Thornton Hall goes against recommendations from other jurisdictions that facilities for women and men should be in separate locations.
 
Fr O’Riordan said that the new Minister for Justice could signal a commitment to an enlightened and effective penal system by commissioning an independent review of the situation of women in prison. He called on the Minister to establish such a review without delay.  

For further information contact:

Fr Tony O’Riordan SJ, Director, Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, 26 Upper Sherrard Street, Dublin 1.

Tel: 087 928 6945; 01 8556814 (office)
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