Ireland has formally opened the new women's wing of the Limerick prison. This expansion was desperately needed. The former wing was at 164% capacity, with women reportedly sleeping on mattresses on the floor of what were already inadequate conditions of a dilapidated 19th-century building. The new build now offers space for 50 women, an increase in capacity of 78%. It also eschews the dehumanising cliches of the traditional prison environment

Brangan, Louise

University of Strathclyde Institutional Repository

23/01/2024, 14:57 New ‘healing’ prison in Ireland points to long history of progressive penal reformhttps://theconversation.com/new-healing-prison-in-ireland-points-to-long-history-of-progressive-penal-reform-208260 1/4Academic rigour, journalistic flairLouise BranganChancellor's Fellow | Senior Lecturer, University of StrathclydeIreland has formally opened the new women’s wing of the Limerick prison.This expansion was desperately needed. The former wing was at 164% capacity, with womenreportedly sleeping on mattresses on the floor of what were already inadequate conditions of adilapidated 19th-century building.The new build now offers space for 50 women, an increase in capacity of 78%. It also eschews thedehumanising cliches of the traditional prison environment.Corridors follow gently bending routes into skylight-lit spaces. Rooms are painted in what has beendescribed as a “calming colour palette” of lilac and pale blue.The windows don’t have bars. The prisoners’ cells look like student accommodation. In place of aprison yard, there is a garden and a children’s play area.The Limerick medium-security prison. John Rodgers|AlamyNew ‘healing’ prison in Ireland points to long history ofprogressive penal reformPublished: October 19, 2023 4.24pm BST23/01/2024, 14:57 New ‘healing’ prison in Ireland points to long history of progressive penal reformhttps://theconversation.com/new-healing-prison-in-ireland-points-to-long-history-of-progressive-penal-reform-208260 2/4Like anyone in the care of the state, prisoners should expect clean and humane living conditions.More than good conditions, though, this design project has been hailed as an “architecture of hope”,providing a healing space in which the prisoners might be “thrive and flourish”.This is not Ireland’s first experiment in progressive incarceration. My research shows that in the 1960s and 1970s, the nation cleaved to the idea that the best kind of penal system is when there is theleast amount of imprisonment.Policies to avoid imprisonmentBefore the 1970s, prison policy in England and much of the western world was underpinned by arehabilitative ambition. The idea was that by employing the likes of criminologists, social workers andpsychologists, prisons could transform people and ultimately reduce crime.An architectural rendering of the new Limerick female prison wing. Department of Justice|LouiseBrangan, CC BY-NC-ND23/01/2024, 14:57 New ‘healing’ prison in Ireland points to long history of progressive penal reformhttps://theconversation.com/new-healing-prison-in-ireland-points-to-long-history-of-progressive-penal-reform-208260 3/4In Ireland, things were a little different. The prison system was managed by the Prison Division, asmall group of generalist civil servants who were unconvinced by the new prison professionals andtheir individuated schemes.The Division held that prisoners were not inherently criminal. Poverty in Ireland at the time wasendemic. Officials assumed that prisoners’ crimes had socio-economic, not pathological, causes.Contrary to other nations, the Division also worried that prison was, in fact, fundamentally damaging.In 1963, Minister for Justice Charles Haughey stated in an internal memo that “theinstitutionalisation, psychological deterioration and disruption to family and individual life,consequent on imprisonment”, must be avoided.This was a widely held view. During a debate on prisons in 1970, TD (member of the Irish parliament)for Fine Gail John Bruton said that prison was “basically unsuitable” as a tool for encouraging peopleto become responsible members of society.Ireland’s humane penal reformsIt was in this sceptical spirit that the Irish government would go on to implement significant reform.In 1973, the Republic of Ireland’s first open prison, Shelton Abbey, was established in a formercountry manor. A maximum of 90 prisoners spent their days tending to the gardens.In 1975, the Training Unit, the nation’s first purpose-built prison, opened on the site of Mountjoyprison in Dublin. Modernist in style, it was lauded for its semi-open regime. Its 90 prisoners woretheir own clothes and came and went during the day for work and training purposes.Perhaps the most radical of these changes was the permissive and liberal use of temporary release.Established in Ireland in 1960, this allowed an increasing number of prisoners to return home fordays, weeks and sometimes permanently, serving the end of their sentence at home.None of this was undertaken with the central ambition of reducing crime. That kind of rehabilitationwas beyond the prison, they believed. The Division hoped that by being released more frequently andby having access to more engaging activities and less austere spaces, it might help prisoners developas people, but at least it would reduce the pains of imprisonment. As an internal 1981 Prison Divisionreport put it:[The aim is] to equip the offender with educational, technical and social skills which will helphim to turn away from a life of crime, if he so wishes. However, even if the offender onrelease does not turn away from a life of crime, those services can be regarded as havingachieved some success if they bring about an improvement in the offender’s awareness of hisresponsibilities to himself, his family and the community.An old manor house in rural Ireland.Shelton Abbey, in County Wicklow. Wikimedia23/01/2024, 14:57 New ‘healing’ prison in Ireland points to long history of progressive penal reformhttps://theconversation.com/new-healing-prison-in-ireland-points-to-long-history-of-progressive-penal-reform-208260 4/4Success, they concluded, was impossible to measure. Best to be lenient, first and foremost.The damage prison causesThe temporary release system still operates today, though in a much more restricted form. As Irelandchanged, so too did public and political attitudes.By the 1990s, it was felt that prisons in Ireland should do a little more confining and a little lessreleasing. In 1995, 21% of prisoners served their sentence on temporary release, that figure has nowdropped to 9%.In the decades since these innovative regimes were instituted, a formidable body of research hasamassed, proving that the Prison Division’s scepticism of imprisonment’s benefits was well founded.Being deprived of liberty and cut off from society puts a person at greater risk of poor mental health,homelessness and poverty after imprisonment. It also contributes, as research in Scotland has found,to a greater risk of dying prematurely.Prison officials in the 1960s and 1970s saw incarceration as inescapably repressive – a site of harm forindividuals, their communities and the wider society. Their bold new policies (open facilities; thetemporary release scheme) sought to reduce the use and impact of the prison. The Irish PrisonDivision thought the prison was the problem, not the prisoners.Limerick’s new women’s unit embodies the opposite idea: that prison can fix damaged prisoners andhelp reduce crime, all while expanding the size of the prison estate.The Prison Division was right. Humane penal policy has to be about much more than buildings,design and physical spaces. Using incarceration sparingly – cautiously, leniently – is better forindividuals and society at large.A black and white archival photograph of people playingsport indoors.The recreation hall at the Training Unit. Department of Justice|Louise Brangan, CC BY-NC-ND

New 'healing' prison in Ireland points to long history of progressive penal reform

https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/87875/1/Branagan-Conversation-2023-New-healing-prison-in-Ireland-points.pdf

New 'healing' prison in Ireland points to long history of progressive penal reform

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