Even if these operations are shocking revelations to those who have a romantic notion of the past then the risk of their disillusionment is worth the price of finally exposing the hypocrisy of those in the establishment who rest self-righteously on the rewards of those who in yesteryear’s freedom struggle made the supreme sacrifice. Sinn Féin Pamphlet, The Good Old IRA, 1985.
It’s fair to say we shouldn’t apply the same judgment to people of the past as we do to our contemporaries. Throughout history, men and women have been conditioned to live and think in ways quite alien to prevailing sensibilities. Looking back into pre-history, we find infanticide commonly practised by hunter-gatherer communities, probably to ensure collective survival.
Many Irish people in the 1930s supported either Fascism in Italy and Germany, or Communist Russia, without being acutely aware of what was happening under those regimes; let alone what would happen during World War II, and beyond.
At that point democracy seemed in global retreat, as a civilisation-defining war loomed between two rival systems, while the surviving democracies contended with a Great Depression that suggested an inherently dysfunctional capitalist system. A person might reasonably be attracted to a radical alternative, however horrifying these totalitarian systems may appear to us now.
Arguably the best did not lose their moral scruples – or democratic values – albeit they may have lost ‘all conviction,’ as Yeats anticipated in ‘The Second Coming’; indeed, he has been described as a fascist ‘fellow-traveller’ himself.
It begs the question: when does the past become a foreign country, where they do things differently? When do we stop judging people by the standards of today? At what point does a new era begin? Can a person even straddle two epochs?
For example, the Sinn Féin party that now stands on the brink of power in Ireland are commonly castigated for the conduct of the IRA during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Yet few, if any, members of that party in Dáil Eireann actively participated in the Provisional IRA.
In contrast, the origin of Fine Gael, which emerged as a combination of Cumann na nGhaedhal, the Irish Centre Party and the National Guard, better known as the Blueshirts, in 1933, tends to be ignored, or even qualified.
O’Duffy leading a salute with the Blueshirts, December 1934.
Thus, Irish Times columnist Stephen Collins defines the Blueshirts as ‘best understood as para-fascists,’ which according to one source is ‘a larger category of regimes that adapted or aped ‘fascist’ formal and organizational features, but did not share the revolutionary ideological vision of genuine fascism.’
Such nuance might have been lost on General Eoin O’Duffy and his more earnest acolytes; albeit my own great-grandfather, John A. Costello – whose commitment to human rights made him an acceptable Taoiseach to former IRA chief of staff and leader of Clann na Poblachta Sean MacBride in the First Interparty Government of 1948 – injudiciously declared in 1934: ‘the Blackshirts were victorious in Italy and … the Hitler Shirts were victorious in Germany, as … the Blueshirts will be victorious in the Irish Free State.’
During periods of crisis even decent people can be carried along by waves of hysteria that cause civil liberties and common decency to be cast aside. A famous 2003 documentary ‘The Fog of War’ features former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara attempting to rationalise the U.S. bombing campaign in South-East Asia. Our present era where we witness a Populist clamour for mandatory vaccination may, in time, be viewed as one such illiberal period.
A youth growing up in a Catholic, or Protestant, working class neighbourhood in Belfast during the 1970s might easily, and perhaps reasonably, have become involved in what we now define as terrorist organisations. That individual might even have committed awful terrible crimes in the Fog of War.
It is a very delicate question as to what point we should let bygones be bygones and allow even participants in a sectarian, or post-colonial, struggle to participate in government without being constantly reminded of their past. Fine Gael certainly had no problem going into government with Clann na Poblachta in 1948, despite the latter’s association with the Republican cause.
This process was actively encouraged by successive Irish governments, especially through the mechanism of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, culminating in the participation of Sinn Féin in government.
Yet what we hear today in Ireland from the likes of Fintan O’Toole is that Sinn Féin somehow has a flawed pedigree, and must apologise, again and again. Frankly, it’s boring and inconsistent.
There is a larger question around how we represent political violence in an Era of Centenaries. The decision of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to enter into a coalition might be viewed favourably in terms of a definitive end to ‘tribal’ Civil War politics.
But what of the use of historical figures associated with those parties? In particular, is it appropriate for Fine Gael to remind the public of its association with Michael Collins, one of the great exponents of what supporters define as urban guerrilla warfare and detractors terrorism, or at least extra-judicial assassination?
Moreover, Collins participated in the Easter Rising led by Pádraig Pearse who said in 1913: ‘Bloodshed is a cleansing and sanctifying thing, and a nation which regards it as the final horror has lost its manhood … There are many things more horrible than bloodshed, and slavery is one of them.’
The shell of the G.P.O. on Sackville Street (later O’Connell Street), Dublin in the aftermath of the 1916 Rising.
Political violence was intrinsic to Pearse’s, and arguably Collins’s, approach to the birthing of the nation. They were men of their time, but were a faction within a faction that enjoyed less popular support than the Provisional IRA during the Northern Troubles.
Besides, while the British authorities in Ireland prior to independence were hardly a model of good government, they had at least distributed much of the land among peasant proprietors and developed reasonable infrastructure. Home Rule was on the statute book. It might be argued that 1916 made Partitition inevitable.
In contrast, the sectarian Unionist government – ‘a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people’ – in Northern Ireland was denying civil rights to Catholics, gerrymandering constituency boundaries and sponsoring the B Specials, a sectarian, quasi-military reserve special constable police force.
The Northern Troubles was a dark period in the history of the island, but to suggest those involved were, and are, inherently evil rather than, in most cases, products of historical forces, is lazy reasoning. Let’s put to bed the idea the Troubles disqualifies Sinn Féin’s participation in government for ever more, and move on to scrutinising the detail of their policies, in particular a failure to adopt a discernible position on the optimum response to COVID-19 in Ireland.
Featured Image: Michael Collins by John Lavery, 1922.
The Final Report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes has unleased another wave of soul-searching in Ireland. How could a society claiming to be ‘Christian’ have failed to protect, and even to have harmed, its most vulnerable – unmarried mothers and their ‘illegitimate’ children? The harrowing accounts fit within a wider ‘Theology of Incarceration’ that inculcated subservience and prevailed on the downtrodden to await their rewards in heaven.
‘The story of Matt Talbot is significant because it reflects the traditional approach of the Irish Catholic Church to the question of social justice’ wrote Ronan Sheehan in his seminal account of enduring exclusion in Ireland’s capital: The Heart Of The City by Ronan Sheehan and Brendan Walsh Brandon Books, (Dublin 1988); a second edition was published as Dublin: The Heart Of The City by Lilliput Press (Dublin, 2016).
Matt Talbot’s legacy continues to resonate through Dublin, and beyond: in the name of Talbot Street off O’Connell Street; and in one of its foremost bridges: the Talbot Memorial Bridge linking Memorial Road (and Custom House Quay) on the north bank of the river to Moss Street (and City Quay) on the south where there is a sculpture of Matt Talbot by James Power erected in 1978 and irreverently called ‘the pain with the chains.’ There is also a shrine to the ‘Venerable’ Matt Talbot’s inside the Neo-Romanesque Church of Our Lady of Lourdes on Sean McDermott Street dating from 1954, and a plaque on Granby Lane off Parnell Square.
Granby Lane, Dublin 1.
Life and Death
The ascetic figure of Matt Talbot assumes centre stage in a chapter in Sheehan’s book entitled ‘Moral Issues and the Catholic Church’. After Talbot’s death in 1924 the example of his life would serve as propaganda for the Church. This posthumous status far exceeded any ambition in a humble working man, who drew solace from a profound religious conviction after struggling with alcohol addiction during his youth.
Sheehan recalls:
In his teens and twenties Talbot, like the other men in his family, drank heavily and was probably an alcoholic. Like the drug addicts of today the Talbots often stole to finance their habits and one occasion they took a street musician’s fiddle. Matt would pawn his boots for drinking money and walk barefoot. One day in 1884 after an idle week that had left them penniless, Matt and his brothers, Phil and Joe, stood outside a public house waiting to be invited inside for a drink. No one asked them ‘if they had a mouth on them’. Talbot went home and later that evening went to Clonliffe College where he took the pledge.
And so began Talbot’s recovery, engendering a moral rectitude that saw him repaying gambling debts and vainly searching for the fiddler whose instrument he had misappropriated. From that point onwards Talbot became a regular mass-goer at St. Saviour’s Dominican Priory on Upper Dorset Street. Indeed, it was while on his way to mass on nearby Granby Lane that he collapsed and died of heart failure. There is now a plaque dedicated to his memory at the site.
Plaque to Matt Talbot on Granby Lane.
Labourer and Ascetic
For much of his life Talbot worked as a labourer at a timber yard, at a time when workers’ movements were in ferment, and revolution in the air. Sheehan writes:
His [Talbot’s] relationship to the labour movement is a matter of dispute. He was on strike in 1900 and in the General Strike of 1913 and he was a member of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. He refused to collect strike pay and when his colleagues pressed it on him, he gave the money to strikers with young families. Unusually for a Dublin man, he often admitted publicly that he could not understand issues and was prepared to be guided by people he felt were better informed. ‘Jim Larkin knows the rights and wrongs of it,’ he is quoted as saying with reference to the strike of 1913. Most frequently he referred issues to his spiritual advisors, or consulted texts they recommended.
Talbot’s mortification of the flesh included sleeping on a plank with block of wood for a pillow. Sheehan tells us that ‘When he died, in 1925, it was discovered that he had worn chains about his body.’ In death rather than life he would play an important role for the Irish Catholic Church: ‘Talbot’s subservient piety was adopted by the Church as a symbol in ideological crusades of the thirties, forties and fifties,’ and any deference to Jim Larkin’s methods would be obscured.
Our Lady of Lourdes on Sean McDermott Street, Dublin 1.
Irish Catholicism
A strong association between Church and State was perhaps predictable in a newly independent Ireland, given Catholicism’s role in preserving a distinctive Irish identity after the failure of the United Irishmen movement in the 1790s to bring lasting unity between Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter. Declining use of the native language after the Great Famine of the 1840s made religion an obvious point of distinction between ‘Catholic’ Irish and ‘Protestant’ English.
The Catholic basis of Irish nationalism was affirmed during the struggle for independence: the 1916 Easter Rising was consciously suffused with religious symbolism; and in its aftermath prominent Republican figures from Protestant backgrounds such as the Countess Markievicz, and Roger Casement converted to Catholicism.
After independence in 1922, devotion to the ‘one true Church, Apostolic and Universal’ crossed the political divide between the Pro- and Anti-Treaty Civil War factions of what became Fianna Fail (1926) and Fine Gael (1933).
In conformity with Catholic doctrine, in 1925 divorce was prohibited in Ireland, a bar that was only removed after a referendum in 1996; while in Dublin in March, 1925 – the year after Matt Talbot’s death – according to Sheehan, ‘the police mounted a massive raid on an area variously known as the kips, Monto, the digs, the village. This was the brothel zone.’
Moreover, the Constitution that came into force under Éamon de Valera in 1937 – and accepted by a majority of the electorate – identified a ‘special position’ for the Catholic Church, in an article only deleted after another referendum in 1972.
Right up until the 1990s – the revelation in 1992 that Bishop Eamon Casey had fathered a child with an American woman is often viewed as a pivotal moment – there was little challenge to the pre-eminence of a Church, which created a state within a state through the provision of education and health that brooked no opposition. Thus in 1951 a combination of the Church hierarchy and the medical profession scuppered the ambitions of Minister for Health Noel Browne to introduce a measure of universal health care through the Mother and Child Scheme.
In its aftermath then Taoiseach John A. Costello of Fine Gael announced unapologetically: ‘I am an Irishman second, I am a Catholic first, and I accept without qualification in all respects the teaching of the hierarchy and the church to which I belong.’ In truth, few among the political class would have demurred from Costello’s unequivocal deference to the Catholic hierarchy.
Our Lady of Lourdes on Sean McDermott Street, Dublin 1.
‘Dominion of Damnation’?
Nonetheless, Fintan O’Toole arguably goes too far in a recent assessment of the Church’s ‘Spiritual Terrorism’: ‘There was no such thing as ”society” as distinct from … dominion of damnation, no neutral State beyond its reach. It pervaded everything and invaded all of our bodies.’
For Irish men, at least, an independent caste of mind, and sense of humour, remained possible within fixed parameters. Building on the Irish Literary Revival, by the 1950s Dublin contained a remarkable artistic community, which included writers such as Flann O’Brien, Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh and J.P. Dunleavy, while the gay artist Patrick Scott was emerging on the scene; meanwhile many Irish Republicans of that period were being influenced by Marxism, to the consternation of the Church.
Notwithstanding greater emphasis on social supports under Éamon de Valera’s Fianna Fail from 1932, including an ambitious house building programme; and the introduction from 1948 of Keynesian fiscal policies under Fine Gael’s John A. Costello – whose son Declan would develop the idea of Christian socialism within that party with his Just Society document – for most of the population even socialism remained a dirty word; while Communism was considered the work of the devil.
Shrine to the ‘Venerable’ Matt Talbot, Our Lady of Lourdes on Sean McDermott Street, Dublin 1.
Archbishop John Charles McQuaid
According to Ronan Sheehan, ‘The political message that the image of Talbot is supposed to communicate is that the working class is properly a subject class.’ This ‘theology of incarceration’ was expressed by Archbishop John Charles McQuaid in an introduction to the first full-length biography of Talbot:
Yet it will be seen that the author in setting out the main events of the life of the Dublin workman has helped us to understand the sanctity to which he ultimately attained. The evidence is of a very remarkable spirit, or rather, gift of prayer, the practice of self-denial in poverty and work, the habit of recollection in the presence of God, a very tender graciousness towards children and a deep love of the most Holy Mother of God … We cherish the hope that the Church may set the seal of her approval from the virtues that made this obscure and gentle workman an image, in our midst, in Dublin, of the Patron of the interior life, St Joseph.’
McQuaid’s unctuous benediction seems the realisation of W. B. Yeats’s concern about an emerging Ireland where ‘men were born to pray and save’; in political terms, as Sheehan, put it:
When proletarian energy is focused upon the ‘interior life’ it is rendered politically tame. In Talbot the class struggle for justice is replaced by an individual struggle for holiness. It is precisely because he was a worker that we can see in Talbot’s spirituality the epitome of the negative ideological role Marx and Engels attributed to religion.
Sheehan caustically observed: ‘Instead of attempting an analysis of the society in which he lived, he meditated.’
Through no fault of his own, the political quiescence of Matt Talbot produced an ideal role model for the Catholic Church of an uncomplaining working man, who awaits his reward in heaven. Importantly this was before the arrival of a Theology of Liberation in the wake of Vatican II that animated many Irish radicals in the 1960s, including the journalist Vincent Browne.
The importance of religious devotion to Talbot in his battle against alcoholism remains significant. Developing spiritual practices or a religious faith can often be beneficial to recovering addicts. However, Talbot’s apparent deference to authority as a working man suited the capitalist structures which the Catholic Church of that period legitimated.
Granby Lane, Dublin 1.
God after God?
A more activist Irish Catholicism infused with Liberation Theology is now closely associated with the continuing work of Father Peter McVerry, whose approach to poverty, according to Sheehan, ‘stands in contrast to that of the promoters of the cult of Matt Talbot.’
The philosopher Richard Kearney in his book Anatheism: Returning to God after God (Columbia, New York, 2010) proposes ‘the possibility of a third way beyond the extremes of dogmatic theism and militant atheism: those polar opposites of certainty that have maimed so many minds and souls in our history.’
Thus the Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer awaiting execution in a Nazi concentration camp for participating in a plot to kill Hitler proposed a reformed Christianity after the ‘Death of God’ heralded by Nietzsche, Freud and totalitarianism. Bonhoeffer wrote: ‘The God of religion, of metaphysics and of subjectivity is dead; the place is vacant for the preaching of the cross and for the God of Jesus Christ.’ To Kearney: ‘Christianity thus becomes not an invitation to another world but a call back to this one, a robust and challenging ‘Christianity of this world’, a secular faith that sees the weakness of God as precisely a summons to the rekindled strength of humanity.’
Throughout most of the history of the State Irish Catholicism reinforced a social order in which the working class were asked to count their blessings rather than their wages; while ‘fallen’ women and their progeny were treated with indifference and cruelty. A sanitized account of Matt Talbot’s life provided a useful lesson in subservience. Now that the spell is broken, it remains to be seen whether a Catholicism after Catholicism can yet emerge in Ireland.
All Images (c) Daniele Idini
Statue of Matt Talbot on the south side of Matt Talbot Bridge.
The degree of civilisation in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The House of the Dead (1862).
The quote above is from a work of fiction, but the author was drawing on a memory of four years imprisonment, following conviction for involvement in the Petrashevsky Circle – a Russian literary discussion group of progressive-minded intellectuals opposed to Tsardom.
The great novelist only narrowly avoided a firing squad too – a stay of execution arriving at the last moment – which shaped his views on the death penalty. In The Idiot (1869) Prince Myshkin offers a salutary critique: ‘the whole terrible agony lies in the fact that you will most certainly not escape, and there is no greater agony than that’. He asks: ‘Who says that human nature is capable of bearing this without madness?’
A sketch of the Petrachevsky Circle mock execution.
For morals reasons – the idea of the state descending to premeditated killing – most jurisdictions no longer permit execution of prisoners following conviction for capital crimes. The strong likelihood of miscarriages of justice makes the argument against the death penalty appear insurmountable. A 2014 study indicated that one-in-twenty-five sentenced to death in the U.S. had been innocent.
The idea endures, nonetheless, that certain offences place perpetrators beyond the pale, incapable of redemption – diabolic even – wherein they are viewed as a perpetual threat to society, or even a moral contagion.
But, like it or not, the vast majority of prisoners do eventually re-join society, and it is in the wider community’s interest – with due regard for a victim’s or their relatives’ thirst for retribution – that convicts are rehabilitated to the extent they emerge as law-abiding and, ideally, self-sufficient citizens.
Given an estimated one in every two re-offend within three years of release in Ireland it appears the correct balance between punishment and rehabilitation is not being struck. A ‘Bibilical’ ‘eye for an eye’ view – reconciling moral accounts – still informs Irish attitudes to incarceration, with overcrowding exacerbating difficulties in an inadequate prison infrastructure.
According to Fíona Ní Chinnéide, of the Irish Penal Reform Trust in July: ‘At the outset of the pandemic, Irish Prisons were way overcrowded, you had people sleeping on mattresses on the floor.’
With courts resuming normal service, she feared prison populations would rise sharply, leading to further overcrowding: ‘I mean, in the best of times overcrowded prisons do not support rehabilitation and lead to increased tensions, drugs and violence, but Covid-19 brings an additional layer to this.’
Small Scandinavian countries such as Norway (20% after two years), Denmark (29% after two years) and Finland (36% after two years) currently lead the world in curbing recidivism. This can be attributed to prisons preparing inmates for life on the outside, including through open prisons that reintegrate offenders back into communities.
Slopping Out
A de-humanization of prisoners is evident in the nineteenth century layout of Mountjoy Prison, the conditions of which could drive anyone to madness, or at least perpetuate a life in crime. Any visitor can discern a judgmental Victorian morality pervading the edifice.
Mountjoy Prison, Dublin 1850 Illustrated London News Public Domain.
The spectre of Henry Martin Hitchins, formerly Inspector for Government Prisons in Ireland, who oversaw its opening in 1850 lingers. He advised the first governor:
prisoners committed to your charge have been convicted of grave offences against God and man, that they have forfeited their civil rights and are confined much to protect society against their evil practices as to afford them an opportunity of repentance and reformation. It is therefore of primary importance that the prisoners should be brought to a proper sense of their condition and after the religious exhortations of the chaplains nothing so directly tends to effect this object as a firm and steady exercise of a severe discipline.
Inhumane features of the nineteenth century regime endure wherein the prisoner forfeits basic civil rights and experiences degrading treatment. Gary Simpson was held in Mountjoy Prison between February and September 2013. As a ‘protection prisoner’ he was kept in isolation from other prisoners – detained in cells on the D1 wing prior to its refurbishment. During that period there was no in-cell sanitation, nor even a sink providing running water.
Prisoners were normally provided with a ‘slopping out’ chamber pot and a plastic bucket of water for washing their hands. Simpson brought an action for damages in response, alleging he was regularly compelled to urinate into empty milk cartons as the chamber pot was too small to be used more than twice without being emptied. He claimed he had to defecate into a refuse bag for the same reason.
Simpson received damages of €7,500 in 2019 after contending with conditions the Supreme Court agreed breached a constitutional right to a basic level of dignity while in prison. The paltry nature of this award – commensurate with a soft tissue injury – is a damning reflection on the degree of Irish civilisation.
Most of us, generally law-abiding citizens are not kept awake at night at the prospect of a stretch behind bars, but even among ‘respectable’ families there are often members who find themselves on the wrong side of the law. And delving into family histories invariably yields an ancestor who has offended against dominant morals expressed in the laws of the day.
In my own case, a great-grandfather Luke Armstrong (1853-1910) of Tubbercurry, Co. Sligo was subjected to at least two stretches behind bars for activities he viewed as political – the so-called Land War of the early 1880s – but which the Crown authorities considered criminal. An ambitious shopkeeper, ‘who was better dressed than his Tubbercurry companions,’ he was arrested in April, 1884 and charged with his fellow conspirators with being a member of the Fenian Society, and conspiring to murder a land agent.
An eviction during the Land War.
Luke Armstrong and his co-defendants were eventually transferred to Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin, and brought to trial the following November at Green Street Courthouse. Thankfully, given the gravity of the charges, all the accused were acquitted based on the unreliability of the Crown informant’s evidence.
As a high-ranking member of the IRB, this was not Luke’s first brush with authority. He was also incarcerated in Enniskillen Gaol earlier in the 1880s where he was subjected to ‘two days’ solitary confinement by the Governor. Luke must have gained extensive experience of slopping out during these unwelcome sojourns.
The Land War of the 1880s may seem like a far off, almost mythical, period, but as recently as the 1940s Irish political prisoners were held – for years on end in many cases – without trial under Emergency Powers Orders in Nissen huts in the Curragh – labelled Tin Town (Baile an Stáin or an Bhaile Stáin) by internees that included the novelist Máirtiín Ó Cadhain.
According to the historian Tony Gray, the EPOs ‘were so draconian that they effectively abolished democracy for the period, and most aspects of the life of the country were controlled by the dictatorial powers the government acquired.’[i]
Ironically, another great-grandfather of mine, former Taoiseach (1948-51 and 1954-57) John A. Costello, was responsible for drafting emergency legislation while Attorney General in 1926 in response to the assassination of Kevin O’Higgins; although according to his biographer David McCullagh: ‘While portrayed as draconian, the response was in fact far more measured than might have been expected, or than was initially considered.’[ii]
At least, to Costello’s credit, in opposition when emergency powers legislation came before the Dáil again during World War II he insisted on a right of appeal to the courts from special tribunals.[iii]
John A. Costello 1891-1976.
Today, new emergency legislation in response to the pandemic awakens fears that “generally law-abiding citizens” could yet fall foul of draconian laws intended to protect the community. Indeed, the term ‘lockdown’ is derived from the lexicon of incarceration: the confinement of prisoners to their cells for all or most of the day as a temporary security measure. Perhaps our experience of stay-at-home orders will instil greater empathy with the loss of liberty and privations endured by a prisoner.
One should be hesitant, therefore, to assume prison to be the fate alone of an underclass or those exhibiting extraordinary moral deviancy. Any one of us could face a stint behind bars, either through weakness, as a result of a mistake or error, a miscarriage of justice, or even where a moral conviction leads to a stand against a law or authority we consider illegitimate.
In accepting this possibility, we should consider the minimum duty of care owed by the State to any person incarcerated, and the purpose of a prison sentence.
Principles of Sentencing
Objectives of sentencing include revenge, retribution, just deserts, deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation and restoration.[iv] The most familiar type of sentencing is a custodial sentence, but judges can also levy fines, or make community service orders; contributions to the poor box are often accepted as a form of contrition in lieu of sentencing.
The handing down of a prison sentence demonstrates to the community that morally repugnant behaviour will receive its just deserts. The threat of incarceration may also act as a deterrent, and a victim’s desire for revenge or retribution should be respected and vindicated.
The current conditions of Ireland’s prisons now amply provide for deterrence and revenge: who in their right mind would relish even a night in ‘the Joy’?
To an extent this is how it should be. Unless the State administers sentencing proportionate to a crime – as agreed by the community through its laws – faith could be lost in the rule of law. Indeed, vigilantism could emerge in its absence – as we have witnessed with extra-legal pursuit of drug dealers in some Dublin neighbours, and especially in Northern Ireland, where horrific kneecapping still occurs. The State should endeavour to monopolize the use of force with the objective of reducing violence, and other antisocial behaviours, overall.
Mandatory sentencing of ten years under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1999 for possession of drugs with a value over €13,000 has not, however, proved an effective deterrent and in most cases judges find exceptional circumstances apply to avoid the full imposition of the term for what is a non-violent offence.
It is understandable that judges would wish to avoid the nuclear option of a prison sentence, which often hardens individuals to lives in crime. If, however, Irish carceral institutions adequately rehabilitated young offenders in particular – nipping errant behaviours in the bud – judges might be inclined to prescribe short interventions. This could offer a chance for someone to turn over a new leaf, and even learn new skills in a safe environment.
Legislators might also consider broadening the range and reducing the period for convictions to be ‘spent’ – fixed at seven years for particular offences. This might diminish the social stigma of serving time behind bars, allowing for it to be seen as a therapeutic intervention rather than a lifelong stain on one’s reputation.
One means of addressing victim impact and an understandable desire for retribution or revenge is through non-adversarial mediation. This includes the idea of restorative justice, which brings perpetrators together with victims of crime. Ideally, a consensus is formed around what the offender can do to repair the harm caused by the offence. See Alan Gilsenan’s documentary The Meeting (below).
Anders Breivik
Incapacitation is also a necessary ingredient to sentencing, where an individual presents an ongoing threat to society, or even to fellow prisoners. This is a familiar justification for the death penalty, and there remain scenarios where an agent of the state – usually a police officer – acting in the common good, may lawfully kill someone, notwithstanding the twenty-first amendment to the Irish Constitution prohibiting the death penalty. Such a response is only lawful if it is proportionate to the threat – a test similar to justifications for self-defence.
Dostoyevsky’s moral argument, and the likelihood of miscarriages of justice, are convincing arguments against the death penalty, but the ongoing danger posed by individuals must still influence the severity of sentencing.
Thus, the continued solitary confinement of Anders Breivik – currently serving twenty-one years for a bomb and shooting attack that left seventy-seven people dead in Oslo – was not held to violate Articles 3 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, relating to the prevention of torture and inhuman or degrading torture, and the right to privacy and family life.
Flowers laid in front of Oslo Cathedral the day after the attacks. Image: Johannes Grødem
The test employed is one of proportionality. The court obviously took into account that Breivik is a mass murderer who had admitted to indiscriminate killing for a political end. Authorities fear he could exert a nefarious influence over fellow prisoners given an opportunity to do so. This view may be correct but it sets a dangerous precedent; albeit the Norwegian government argued that Breivik’s three-cell complex, with access to video games, TV and exercise facilities, is better than the conditions of most other prisoners, thereby compensating for his solitary confinement.
In recent times terrorism has emerged as a justification for harsher sentencing – and even torture– and extended periods of questioning before charges, but the definition of a terrorist is loose and unsatisfactory, and a form of structural racism (or Islamophobia) appears to inform treatment of offenders in many jurisdictions. My own great-grandfather was considered a Fenian terrorist in his day.
The temporary removal of liberties such as conjugal rights between husband and wife is generally considerate a proportionate punishment when a guilty verdict is found. This view was upheld in Ireland in the case of Murray v. Ireland [1985]. But what if the denial of such a liberty impedes rehabilitation or the restoration of a flourishing individual to society? This judgment may merit re-examination if we are to prioritise rehabilitation.
The interest of the community in ensuring a prisoner is equipped to transition back into civilian life should trump an understandable desire for revenge felt by victims of crime and their relatives. But this reasoning does not now inform sentencing in Ireland, where even posting a letter requires a lengthy review process at either end. Enjoying the privilege of just one phone call a week means prisoners cannot easily stay in touch with family members.
Among the reasons for Finland’s low rate of recidivism is the open prisons developed to prepare convicts for life on the outside. Instructively, Finland has the lowest per capita incarceration rate in the European Union, with just 51 people per 100,000 in some form of prison, according to the World Prison Brief, while Ireland’s stands at 84 per 100,000, which might well be higher but for current overcrowding inhibiting sentencing.
The former prison building of Katajanokka, Finland is being renovated into a hotel.
Also, instructively, Ireland ranked sixth worst in Europe in a crime index conducted by Numbeo scoring 44.52, whereas Finland lies in thirty-fifth place overall on 22.80. Thus, despite a significantly smaller prisoner population, Finland is also a safer country than Ireland, scoring 77.20 against 55.48. Given Ireland’s GDP per capita ($89,383) exceeds Finland’s ($49,334) by a considerable margin, this is clearly a question of priorities rather than resources, and sadly, an indicator of our respective “degrees of civilisation.”
Sasu Tyni, a researcher at Helsinki University and the Criminal Sanctions Agency (RISE), says that the Finnish system is based on a belief that locking people up is a last resort. ‘Closed prisons are more or less grounded in security purposes, while open prisons aim to be closer to society, family, work etc,’ she explains. ‘The strategy of the Criminal Sanctions Agency has for years been to use closed prison as the last option. We assume an open prison system can decrease the risk of recidivism.’
Prison governor Kaisa Tammi-Moilanen explains that prison authorities have ‘purposely tried to avoid everything that we can which are associated with a prison,’ which means there are no physical barriers stopping prisoners from escaping. Tammi-Moilanen explains this is intentional, as it encourages prisoners to develop a sense of self-control.
Prisoners in a closed prison don’t need to learn any self-control, because everything they do is controlled. But to be a normal citizen you need to have inner control of your life, so you know how to behave, you know what is good for you and you know what is good for the society.
At present the open prisons at Loughan House and Shelton Abbey are, to an extent, used to cope with the overcrowding in the closed prisons and therefore in their current use could only play a minor role in the effective management of prisoners through the prison system.
There is no evidence that international best practice has been taken into account since.
Reskilling
Re-evaluation of the role of Irish prisons does not appear to be on the immediate horizon. The new Minister for Justice Helen McEntee indicated that Garda reform, domestic violence and the modernisation of the sector’s IT services were her three priorities in an interview with the Sunday Business Post in August.
Yet historic shortfalls in rehabilitation have brought high rates of recidivism at significant cost to the exchequer: the average price of an ‘available, staffed prison space’ was €75,349 in 2019. Moreover, the lawlessness evident in parts of Ireland can be traced, at least in part, to the failure of the prison system to rehabilitate adequately.
Targeted investment should produce long-term savings by reducing recidivism. The new Minister thus has a huge opportunity to leave a profound legacy that could ameliorate conditions in certain ‘no go’ neighbourhoods.
Introducing meaningful open prisons to reintegrate prisoners into communities would require a cultural shift however. Prevailing Irish attitudes towards crime are informed by enduring social cleavages: in Dublin expressed in euphemisms about someone being ‘from the inner city;’ or ‘of Traveller origin’ in rural Ireland. Yet prison reform could address long-term poverty and social exclusion. Any progress would be a significant feather in the new Minister’s cap.
It seems obvious that prisons should offer inmates a chance to break the chain in a life of crime, rather than perpetuating one. Sadly, incarceration remains a breeding ground for criminality. Fresh thinking is required to address shortfalls in mental health provision, drug addiction counselling, and general education – especially illiteracy: one in six of the adult population in Ireland is still functionally illiterate.
In 1997 the Irish Times reported: ‘It is widely accepted that the standard of education of most inmates adults and juveniles is somewhere between third and fifth class of primary school.’ Twenty years later the same paper reported: ‘Overall, four out of five prisoners (80 per cent) left school before their Leaving Cert, more than half (52 per cent) left before their Junior Cert, and just over a quarter (26 per cent) never attended secondary school.’
Anyone hoping to leave a life in crime behind should be able to glimpse viable alternatives while in prison. A Leaving Certificate is generally seen as a foothold for advancing one’s career. In 2011 the Irish Times reported that 117 prisoners were sitting the Leaving Cert and 161 were taking Junior Cert exams that year, but current figures are not easily accessible.
Alternatively, offering prisoners business skills has been floated as one approach by chef-entrepreneur Domini Kemp, who participated on a programme at Wheatfield Prison. As she it put it:
I read that prisoners cost north of €68K a year in Ireland and it struck a chord with me that if you could teach them how to start their own business and reduce the rate of reoffending, how much you could save.
An entrepreneurial career path will obviously not suit every ex-prisoner. The challenge of starting a small business should not be underestimated. But the state should be empowering prisoners with career alternatives for when they return to their communities.
Mountjoy Campus, North Circular Road, Dublin, Dublin 7, Ireland
Wellbeing
In an enlightened society such as Finland’s it appears as if the traditional prison is being phased out. This may be attributed to many factors including an inclusive education system, as well as advanced ideas on wellbeing. Minister of Social Affairs and Health in Finland, Pirkko Mattila, explains the connection between economic growth and wellbeing:
Economic growth improves people’s wellbeing, whereas wellbeing and health of the population enhance economic growth and stability. This interlinkage must be better recognised. In Finland, we are putting forward a holistic approach to this question that requires horizontal thinking and cross-sectoral co-operation. We call this approach, the Economy of Wellbeing.
This holistic approach seems to play an important role in keeping crime to a minimum in Finland. In contrast the steady acquisition of wealth in Ireland appears to be decoupled from the Economy of Wellbeing. A more enlightened prison system could help bridge that divide.
Nevertheless, it may be impossible ever to extinguish the evil that leads to certain crimes. The example of Anders Breivik in Norway demonstrates that even highly civilised countries witness heinous crimes, or black swan events.
We may always require prisons to act as a deterrent and to protect society from evil behaviour, but it is worth bearing in mind that any one of us could find ourselves behind bars. It is in all our interests that prisons assist inmates to become functioning members of society. The Irish prison system is now perpetuating criminality, and the new Minister should make reform a priority.
Featured Image: main hall of Kilmainham Gaol.
[i] Tony Gray, The Lost Years: The Emergency in Ireland 1939–45 Little Brown & Co, London, 1997, p. 5.
[ii] David McCullagh, The Reluctant Taoiseach: A Biography of John A. Costello, Gill and MacMillan, Dublin, 2010, p.63
