Mental Health and Prisons

international | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Sunday February 04, 2007 23:01 by Kevin T. Walsh - Social Inclusion and Justice

Stale Prison System and Management.....Room for thought, ideas and Restorative Justice

In the last number of years we have heard about Gardai indiscipline and Gardai brutality in our country. The Morris Tribunal in Donegal states that is fact. But tonight let us focus on prison in-discipline and prison collusion of hatred within the system.

The 17 years I worked with Simon gives rise to meeting a variety of people. They were mostly homeless due to a compulsory overtime system. This system was overturned in the High Court in the 1980's but it was too late for hundreds of officers who suffered from depression and additcton to alcohol within the System. Tonight I give their story.

They joined the prison service in the 1970's mainly - they told me. They were paid on a Wednesday - among staff it was known as the wine docket. When one screw had a row with an inmate in the Wood Yard, he would then organise systematic verbal abuse during the night so that the prisoner could not sleep. This continues to this day under Prisoner Governor John Lonergan.

Longeran is one of the greatest illusions created by our Justice System - as being a caring, humane and dignified man. Many of the ex-prisoner s who are homeless would say different. One man (a former telecom engineeer) told me - in 1984, I got 3 months for bad debts. I was put into a cell where the 'piss pot' was not changed for weeks and the smell was inhumane. I complained to a Deputy Governor, he asked over a dozen times to see Lonergan but to no avail. Eventually I got some bleach from another inmate and I scrubbed that pot because that was my toilet.

Lonergan is almost a quarter of a century, a Governor of Mountjoy Prison. He appears on Pat Kenny show (TV and Radio) and he gives the illusion just like Haughey did, for the people - his inmates.

After watching Robinson and his views about the Health Service in Ireland, if Lonergan worked for a coporate company he would be gone 20 years ago but he was hand-picked by the Government of the Day.......It is alleged he was trained in PRO by the Department of Justice.

Suicides in Ireland are now at an epidemic stage. Last week alone we had a mother and child off the Cliffs of Moher. She asked for help but now she is dead and so is her little boy. The other little boy in Limerick aged 11, is a sad mystery. God Bless the family.

Sometime ago a young man asked for a separate cell in Mountjoy because he was in fear of another inmate. It was known on his file he was psychotic - this young vulnerable boy was refused..........You all know the end.....he was butchered to death in a six man cell. His family asked questions? Lonergan hides behind the Department of Justice yet 15% of the prison population in Mountjoy had a mental illness. Tonight I ask the question - could there not be a better system of communication between Governor Lonergan and the Central Mental Hospital psychiatric services? As the homeless man's story goes, these inmates are so overdosed they walk the prison yards like zombies.

Dr. Kennedy I admire in the Central Mental Hospital. There needs to be a shake up defining the Criminal and Mental Health groups within the prison system and generally.

I wrote previously an article on the Block in Cork which is used as a place of punishment for inmates who break rules. Lonergan has no problem putting into a prison van from Mountjoy - maybe 2 to 5 inmates and sending them to Cork Prison - The Block. A couple of years ago, a young Wicklow boy left Cork prison - he was in prison two years for minor drug charges. In the 14 months he was in Cork he received no visits because of the distance - he did not want to put his family to turnoil. After some weeks of his release, he died of an overdose. I would like Pat Kenny to ask John Lonergan why.

One man told me he witnessed a mental patient in a padded cell for over 40 days in the 1980's. He said this man was treated like an animal by staff and was mocked and laughed at. I don't believe this homeless man was lying to me.

In the last few years I have done some research. I have spoke to staff, former staff, and inmates.

Sometime ago, my partner Michelle, told me about the European funding granted to Ireland. She herself was part of a research programme run by the Trinity Centre for Womens Studies, Aware, NDA and Horizon. The funding was from the Horizon programme (NDP) funds and the research was about women and depression and how to cope. Drama, Writing, Exercise, Counselling, Career planning......for a period of 4 days a week provided the grounding, self confidence, and found ways of nurturing hidden talents in people to help them accept change and move forward.

The EU sponors a myriad of projects and the Government promote same. NALA provides excellent services to teach people how to read, write, do simple administrative tasks - basically it teaches people how to get through the bureaucratic system that leaves some people too scared to do anything other than beg and be homeless......

What is Restorative Justice in Ireland? What submissions do our prisons make to get the funding to provide opportunities like the above for the prisoners. We are talking about Equipping people.

I have no problems with people being contained in prisons for long periods for crimes like Rape, Murder etc. I have a serious problem with young offenders being treated inhumanely in prison (and without dignity and respect) by undisciplined prison officers. This has been going on for years. I now ask the Inspector of Prisons to act upon this.

Tonight I ask John Lonergan - when a young man spends 18 hours a day in a cell (i.e. locked in). Is this humanity?

Tonight I will make a comment about the forecoming elections. Bertie is a legend of intrigue. It is alleged, some years ago, while Minister for Finance, on the way out, during Election time, he walked into a Sinn Fein pub in Dundalk with 15 of his FF followers - I think the pub is called O'Neills. They all sat down in a corner planning the election strategy to get a seat in Dundalk alias El Paso. Bertie and his 15 cohorts felt the hostility/hatred against them, in the pub. Bertie asked his friends - what are you having but before he went to the bar he put a proposition to the 15 cohorts 'I am going to walk up to the bar and this big fat Sinn Fein publican is going to laugh himself sick (while I p..s all over him) - all his friends laughed themself sick. Bertie goes to the bar and orders 16 pints. While the two bar men are pulling the 16 FF pints, B is talking and p...ss.ng all over the owner - the Shinner. They shake hands. Bertie goes back to his shocked cohorts and they are in total shock at the sight of the owner and the barmen covered in Bertie's p.. and laughing. Before they leave the pub, the 15 FF's owe Bertie 200 pounds each for the bet.

Some years later, at a Cabinet meeting, when Bertie was Taoiseach. 6 of the famous cohorts are now ministers. One asked the Taoiseach if he recalled the night in Dundalk - How did you do it? You pis..d all over a Shinner and he laughed. Bertie replied. When I was homeless living in a sleeping bag with a piggy bank in the FF office, I read Freud and that night in the Dundalk pub I walked up to the owner and I betted with him 300 pounds that I could piss into a pint glass from 20 feet and his words were 'Go for it' Bertie and yee fools never saw the pint glass. I pis..d and I lost and I gave the Shinner 300 pounds then I realised they could be bought. Then I returned to my own table and I took the money of yee 15 fools and made a profit (tax free).

Back to a serious line before I close. Bertie may bluff his way through a lot of issues but the New Year brings a lot of questions concerning bank accounts and house purchases. The bluff cannot go on forever. Our hospitals cry out for help, people with depression die because of lack of help and services and yet we aspire to be one of the wealthiest nations in the world. Just like Bertie and Lonergan - an illusion. Will we please wake up and remove this illusion and put in its place Social Justice and above all an educational system in the prison adapted for mental health conditions like ADD so that literacy is priortised in our prison system.

My last question tonight. In my research - why did 92% hold no respect for Governor Lonergan - they referred to him as a Department man. A man with more faces than a Vegas Brothel - then this is yet another part of the illusion. Sadly we all go for it - that is why young people die.

Former Justice Kinlan gave a damning report on the Justice System. Mc'Dowell's comment was 'This man is out to get me'. Minister you tackled the overtime problem in the prison system. Now it is time to bring in outside people (qualified including psychologists, academics).

One point that facinates me when I see the apparent health condition of young people leaving the methadone clinic in Baggot Street - and those that do their rota begging outside key positions, is the state of their immune system are lack of it.

Then I hear daily about MRSA in the hospital......media must be creating a phobia in fearful people about going to hospital and then I think about what is the MRSA situation in the prisons !!!!!! Does anyone have a view here.

My partner has chronic fatigue therefore very low immune system......how safe is she going to get bloods or A &E and others like her with these untreatable immuno viruses?

I now close by saying I hope the Bird Virus does not reach Ireland....The 3 Mary's are in quarantine tonight - these are the Ireland's rarest birds - Harney, Coughlan and Hanafin. I pray all is well for the FF poultry stocks.

Kevin