The Irish Prison Service is today releasing two reports on the nature and extent of Intercultural Awareness, Communication and Racial Equality in Irish Prisons. They are available now to be downloaded from the Prison Service website, www.Irishprisons.ie and will be published in printed format next week.
These reports were commissioned from two independent service providers, namely NTDI (The National Training and Development Institute) and Fitzpatrick Associates. NTDI was the lead contractor delivering an action research and training project involving both prisoners and prison officers at Wheatfield Prison, Dublin. Fitzpatrick Associates provided an independent evaluation of the project and recommendations for future action.
Sean Aylward, Director General of the Prison Service welcomed the two new publications. He complimented the two independent contractors involved, NTDI and Fitzpatrick's Associates on their work and thanked prison staff and prisoners who co-operated with the project.
Mr Aylward acknowledged that minority groups in prison have always required special care and attention to protect them from harassment and discrimination. Recent demographic developments in Ireland have created a new ethnic diversity not just in the broader population but also in the prisons where several hundred people of non-Irish backgrounds are now committed every year.
In keeping with the findings of the reports and the Irish Prison Service philosophy of treating all the persons in its care with courtesy and respect, the Service now plans to review its internal procedures both for staff training and for processing prisoner complaints.
Mr Aylward says that "it is our intention to respond positively to the new reality that is ethnic diversity in Irish prison life. Our policy will be to investigate all complaints, to train our staff in expected behaviours and to develop a supportive environment for vulnerable prisoners from diverse ethnic backgrounds".
General Conclusions of Reports
1. An apparent unwillingness among offenders to report unfair treatment;
2. A need for clarity regarding staff responsibility for reporting culturally related incidents and a need to ensure staff knowledge of how to report such incidents;
3. A wide divergence in perceptions between offenders and staff regarding unfair treatment of offenders on cultural grounds.
Recommendations
Programmes of training in Intercultural Awareness based on the NTDI training programme and aimed at all prison staff and all offenders should be drawn up and implemented across the prison system. This training should be mainstreamed and integrated into other induction and ongoing training for offenders and staff.
The method of delivery of this training should be selected by prison management taking account of the experience of implementing this pilot training programme. Involvement of representatives of minority groups e.g. Immigrants and Travellers in the training process should be considered.
The training should be supported and reinforced by other initiatives to develop and encourage intercultural awareness throughout the prison system.
Among the measures to be considered should be:
- development of a prison policy statement (taking account of Equality Legislation and international best practice) in relation to Intercultural Awareness/racism, including a code of practice and staff reporting procedures/responsibilities and complaints procedures for offenders and staff for culturally related incidents;
- internal communication/publicity for this policy position and procedures research into why offenders are unwilling to report culturally related incidents and actions to address this issue;
- research into the widely differing perceptions of unfair treatment on cultural grounds as between offenders and staff and action to address this issue.
Further Research Possibilities
Last year a number of non-government organisations expressed an interest in researching racism issues in Irish Prisons. The Prison Service was anxious at the time to get the ongoing NTDI research project completed first to avoid competing analysis of the problem. Now that the project is completed and released into the public domain, the Irish Prison Service and indeed the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Mr. Michael McDowell, T.D., have indicated that there is no objection or difficulty, in principle, to further research projects being conducted in this area provided they meet the professional requirements of the Irish Prison Service, Prisoner Based Research Ethics Committee which is chaired by Professor Patricia Casey (Member of Prisons Authority and Professor of Psychiatry at University College Dublin). In point of fact the two NGO's concerned, Amnesty and the Irish Penal Reform Trust have been given advance copies of these reports. |
