Our prison is an evil place. 

Some might ask, can you punish without vengeance?  My answer to that is ‘yes’.  We can develop a system that recognizes that people who have wronged (and if we dig deep enough we realise that they are victims as well) are reprimanded, but proportionality and not actions governed by revenge, retaliation and mistreatment should be the key.

Prison is a despondent place.

It’s where so much resentment is experienced day-in-day-out and converges in one small piece of land.  People there are unhappy.  It’s their fault, I hear you say!

It is the place where all those residing in it are despised. The place itself generates dander, odium and revulsion. 

It is the place of ‘social death’. 

This is a place of great horror. The high walls. The damp bulwarks. The echoing sounds that bounce of the grey stones. The clanging of the sound of keys chained to the Official’s waist. The smell of clamminess and dankness.

It is a space overcome with lurching pain coming from all directions; the victims, the prisoners, the families of both.

That is the place where relatives of inmates have to visit with their heart in their mouth. Most members of the family cannot come to terms with what made their loved ones do such despicable crimes that bring shame on the family.  Probably they ask but, ‘why did they have to hang out with the wrong crowd’? ‘Why didn’t they pull away when they were still in time?’

Who knows what grief the inmates go through because they know that their actions landed them there and they cannot reverse their actions?

Who knows what people feel when they sit in their cells and have to go through the day processing the ills they have been accused of, reliving their mistakes?

Who knows what pain some inmates might be going through, because quoting the Prison Director himself who admitted with me back in September, ‘they might have been sentenced wrongly’?

Who knows what pain some felons go through when they are trying to create stability and end up being tossed out of their little space and moved to a different division with people they don’t know - and this simply to disrupt, to break people down?

That place is obnoxious, and no real effort is being made to change.

How are we going to overcome all of that?

By vengeance and restraining chairs?  Because the ‘chair’ is no rehab and the heavy handedness is no convalescence. 

By threatening inmates? This is no rehab. 

By treating some prisoners better than others?  This is no therapy.  

So, what is the answer? ‘Love’. 

Oh, and before you think I’m being sentimental, mawkish or over-emotional, I’m talking about ‘love’ in terms of respect, structure, role modelling, courteousness, politeness, gentility, considerateness and empathy. 

And if you empathise, people will respond to ‘good’ with ‘good’.

And if you speak courteously, it will give space for people to vent their anger and serve as a process of catachresis.  

And if we do that, our recovery programmes will work and everything will fall into place. 

That is why it is time to have a different type of directorship, which isn’t based on fear. The current Director, much as he might have good intentions, has proven he is not fit for purpose.  A bad penny always turns up. He has grown stiff and uncompromising.

The anonymity that the Institution bestows should lead to even more rigorous psychometric screening, personality assessment and meticulous mental health analysis of ALL members of staff, from Director down. This should go hand-in-hand with an ongoing evaluation (every 2 months) to ensure permanency in leadership, for the Agency’s sake but above all because to work in a prison you need to be in the best possible mental state.

It is the right time for the internal structures inbuilt in the system to iron out the misgivings, to kick in and do the honorable thing – there are some good people in these boards and I appeal to them; ‘Please don’t get hijacked by the closing walls of the institution. Remember that these people are human beings who have failed, but if we don’t heal them we will get them back in our midst as they were (possibly worse off). They are people who have wronged, but there lies hope in each one of us.  Face it, you all have aggrieved in some way or other but managed to rise above it.’

It is the right time to have leadership which is not subservient to alleged unethical behavior, that satiates on power and control but is able to look in the eyes of every prisoner without ire and disgust. 

It is the right time to do away with solitary confinement as an intimidating tool because research has clearly shown that it not only breaks people momentarily, but destroys them permanently.

It is the right time to stop using verbal or any other form of violence.  Bullying, coercion, intimidation generate more angst.

It is the right time to stop fancying one over the other and using prisoners to provide intelligence. It is time to stop packing people in inhumane cells. The Director, way back in September had told me that this is something he gets landed with because of the lack of space and because politicians do not take decisions quickly enough when it comes to the prison. For example, he criticized the sluggish unrolling of the extensive use of tagging, community sentencing and non-custodial sentences.    

It is the time to stop taking over spaces which were targeted to serve as rehabilitative spaces to place privileged inmates.

It is the time to stop claiming that a process of educating 70 people is good – no, not even good enough when we have a current population of 850 inmates (and this not counting the turn-over of inmates). We spend over 23 million euros a year on that Institution (in recurrent expenses) which add up to a miserly 74 euros a day per prisoner in a high security establishment – need I say more?   No wonder the place is falling apart.  Add this to 3.2 million euros in capital expenditure and 250k in EU structural funds and you see why our system is in decadence.

It is time to step up work with intergenerational families of crime. We have the data – let’s do something about it. 

It is time to invest more money in the rehab of drug addicts within the Agency, as the Director had told me that there weren’t enough resources being dedicated to therapy and the number of inmates that can be placed on the programme is limited. 

The evil in that place should be wrestled with ‘love’. Give ‘love’ to someone who has never known it and you will take the wind out of their sails.

Give people the chance to learn, to train, to study, to work.  Pull down those outlandish senseless imposing walls and instead build cells with windows that overlook greenery and with proper amenities.  Let the prisoners feel that they are part of the community that they have hurt. Review laws. Find other ways instead of incarceration. We might need a bigger prison but definitely with a smaller population.

Listen. With all the money we spend on our prison, it is leading nowhere but to containing people until they go out and move on to their next crime. 

Imagine if with the money that we spend on the prisons we have would better inmates, happier employees and a safer community.

Imagine if with the money that we spend we wouldn’t need to have politicians who are simply defending the indefensible.

Imagine if with the money we spend we would have a strong community, and a safer one. 

This is the prison we need, one that responds to violence with a dose of ‘love’, one that responds to evil with goodness, one that responds to maliciousness with respect. Let’s try this out, all the rest has failed anyway – this is worth a shot.