Mick Clifford: Prisons should not be used as dumping grounds for mentally ill people
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It’s as if human and civil rights only elicit interest these days if the cause is new and trendy.
Kay Barrett is currently in Limerick Prison. She was incarcerated following the triggering of suspended sentences for convictions over breaches of safety orders.
The orders were put in place because her family believed they might act as a deterrent as the required significant mental health intervention was not open to her. The deterrent didn’t work.
“The court was told of the suspended sentences hanging over her,” reported Noel Baker.
“It was admitted she had made a number of 999 emergency calls on one day, and more again that morning. It was a condition of her bail that she refrain from making those calls unless there was an actual need.
"A previous court heard she had made 200 such calls in the space of a month. She had produced a knife when gardaí called to her home. Now, here she was, clearly in the grip of something she was trying but failing to control.”
Ms Barrett’s family doesn’t have an issue with the judges or the gardaí who have been involved in the case. They acknowledge that Kay’s care has been to the forefront of all involved. But what kind of a system exists in which the only option to deal with somebody who has a mental health difficulty is to commit them to prison?
There is no dispute but that prison has long been a dumping ground for people with mental health difficulties from some sections of society.
This was set out most recently in a report published last November, Access to Mental Health Services for People in the Criminal Justice System.
The report’s author, Susan Finnerty, who is the Inspector of Mental Health Services, noted that people with major mental illness are increasingly appearing in court charged with minor offences.
“Many people who are mentally ill and who have committed minor offences can be appropriately and safely managed in general psychiatric healthcare settings,” stated Dr Finnerty at the report’s launch.
“There is a lack of diversion for people who are mentally ill to local psychiatric services in Ireland and currently there are no pre-arrest diversion teams in place, unlike in other jurisdictions. This has resulted in people with mental illness coming before the courts for minor offence and ending up in the prison system.”
In a functioning system, judges should be in a position to refer offenders who are mentally ill to an appropriate setting. In reality, that option does not exist in this State.
The Central Mental Hospital (CMH) has a lengthening waiting list and is chronically under-resourced.
Just as judges don’t have referral as an option so also prison governors are constantly attempting to have prisoners transferred to a psychiatric setting but the beds are just not available.
Equally, at an earlier stage, when perhaps a garda might spot mental illness as a major factor in a person either offending or likely to do so, there are scant appropriate services.
“It is clear that resources must be put in place at pre-arrest, arrest and court liaison stages,” said Dr Finnerty.
The situation, as she outlines it, has been the subject of numerous reports, yet the required care and assistance has never been put in place.
Everybody knows this to be the case. Every minister for justice has received reports on it. No doubt, decision makers at all levels in the elected and permanent government are appalled at this treatment, but that does not translate into action.
The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment has criticised the complete absence of appropriate care.
Within the system, voices are also speaking out. Last year, the published the chaplain reports from the State’s prisons for 2020.
Practically all referred to the issue of mental health in prisons. The most cogent came from the chaplain of the women’s prison, the Dóchas Centre, in Dublin.
“At what point does it become an issue that the untrained prison staff could develop their own mental issues as a result of being obliged to supervise prisoners who have been diagnosed by the CMH Prison In-reach Services as patients with serious mental health issues,” stated the report.
“It is obvious that mental health issues in prison are going to proliferate. Irish society has excavated the scandals of the Industrial Schools, the Magdalene Laundries, the Tuam Babies, etc.
“The role of the sub-contractor Religious Orders helped to deflect the responsibility for the scandal away from the State. The question that is never asked is how the State allowed these scandals to happen.
"Prisons are increasingly being described as the dumping grounds for mental health issues and the scenario has all the makings of a scandal of the future.”
When the day of realisation arrives, there will, in the great tradition of these things, be much breast beating. And then everybody will ask how was this ever allowed to happen.