Bishop of Kilmore Martin Hayes has appealed to policymakers to be more attentive to the medical and psychological needs of prisoners jailed for crimes linked to drug addiction.
In a statement for Prisoners’ Sunday, the liaison bishop to the Irish Prison Service criticised Irish prisons for being “devoid of humanity” and he highlighted that many prisoners struggle with addiction and loneliness.
“It is not just those who are incarcerated that serve the sentence” he stressed as he prayed for families as well as for prison chaplains, whose work, he said, “is vital but unheralded within prison services throughout the world”.
Separately, the chief executive of the Prison Advice and Care Trust (Pact) has said the key to rehabilitation of prisoners is “good relationships” with their families, friends and the outside world.
Speaking at The Tablet’s webinar “Prisons: reform, rehabilitation… and redemption?” Andy Keen-Downs noted that for every prisoner, there is usually at least one family member who struggles and that includes children.
“We know that between 200-300,000 children a year are affected by a mum or dad being taken away to prison. We also know that people in prison who maintain strong family links and good family relationships are about 40 per cent less likely to do more crime when they are released from prison.”
Other speakers at the webinar were Jonathan Aitken, Rachel Billington and Dame Sally Coates.
Highlighting the impact of the Covid lockdown on prisoners and the pandemic policy of locking people up for over 23 hours a day to reduce the risk of Covid transmission, Andy Keen-Downs warned that many prisons are still operating to that level of lockdown.
“It is not because they want to and it is not because of Covid; it is because they don't have the staff to run proper regimes with access to all the things that we know help rehabilitate people.”
Recalling the 1990 riot at Strangeways prison in Manchester over conditions and the riots in prisons across the country that followed and gave rise to a series of reforms he said: “It shouldn't take another series of prison riots to bring about the reform we need. We need our political leaders to pay attention to the state of the system.”
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