Unlocking a Locked‐down Regime: The Role of Penal Policy and Administration in Northern Ireland and the Challenges of Change

Abstract

The aim of this article is to examine the impact of the Conflict on the development and character of the prison system in Northern Ireland. It traces the use of imprisonment to repress challenges to the legitimacy of the State, and the ways in which prisoners and communities have resisted oppressive penal policies. Evidence is presented that notwithstanding the peace process and early release of most politically‐motivated prisoners, regimes within the North's three prison establishments remain heavily influenced by the experience of violence, with a prioritisation of security over care and rehabilitation. The establishment, in 2010, of an independent Prison Review led by Dame Anne Owers, has presented an opportunity to address the underlying problems within the prison system. The article concludes by exploring the implications of the Northern Ireland experience for other transitional jurisdictions undergoing penal reform.

Not so multicultural prison: Polish prisoners in a transitional prison system

“…Instead, many histories of incarceration here are linked to the history of a violent conflict. From the use of detention without trial in the late 1960s and early 1970s in an attempt to quell dissent, to the imprisonment of large numbers of Republican and Loyalist prisoners throughout the conflict (McEvoy, 2001; McKeown, 2001), prisons ‘not only served to contain resistance but were also sites to “break” prisoners, deny their political status and enforce restrictive and brutalising regimes’ (Wahidin et al, 2012: 458). Seventeen years after the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement of 1998 (the Agreement), and the release of the majority of politically motivated prisoners, the conflict continues to cast a long shadow over prisons in Northern Ireland.…”

“…Unlike the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC, now the Police Service of Northern Ireland), reformed after the so-called Patten Report (Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland, 1999), the Prison Service did not see a ‘regime change’ immediately after the Agreement. Since 1998, subsequent inspections of Northern Ireland’s three prisons documented a system struggling to focus on appropriate provision in the areas of prisoner care and safety and to address appropriately over 1500 recommendations for improvement made by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons and the Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland (CJI NI) between 2005 and 2011 (PRT, 2011a: 29; see also Wahidin et al, 2012 for a more detailed discussion).…”