Progress was reported on the discussion on this motion.
COMMITTEE ON FINANCE. - ESTIMATES FOR PUBLIC SERVICES. VOTE 31 (GENERAL PRISONS BOARD—RESUMED).
In the previous discussion I said I would raise certain questions with regard to prison officers. I have since looked up the correspondence, and I have come to the conclusion that it would be better not to raise it on this Vote but to deal with it in another way. I should like to draw attention to an answer which the Minister gave to a question I put to him respecting the provision made for girl offenders similar to a Borstal institution for boys. The Minister informed us that no special provision had been made for girl offenders similar to Borstal institution for boys, and no provision was contemplated for girls between the ages of 16 and 21. At present he said they receive treatment on Borstal lines, but the number of such girls was not sufficient to justify the opening of a female Borstal institution. He explained that there was special training for girls, and that girl prisoners were sent to prisons, such as Mountjoy, and not segregated. As far as I can understand, that is largely the complaint, that a girl from 16 to 21 is sent to prison, but though she may receive separate treatment, in the sense that she receives certain training, there is still the association with older, more hardened and degraded women prisoners.
I would urge that it is worth undertaking some trouble, and perhaps some expense, to avoid that, even though the numbers are too small to allow of a special institution to be provided for them. Everybody, I think, agrees that special provision should be made for boys, and, though the numbers may be smaller, I think the arguments may be even stronger in their application to girls. The training is of primary importance, but training plus association with older and more hardened prisoners is going to take much from the value which that training would give. I think it would be very desirable indeed that some arrangement should be made so that girl prisoners could be set apart and treated separately in every way, from the older prisoners, even if within the same building or institution. I do not know whether that is possible, but I think it could surely be managed that in one or other of the prisons arrangements could be made for segregation of young girl prisoners from the older prisoners, and that separation would then be combined with the special training and the advantages the Borstal treatment would provide. I think it is quite an important matter, and I would press on the Minister the desirability of giving very careful consideration to this proposal.
I would ask the Minister, in supporting what Deputy Johnson has said, to carry his inquiry somewhat further than the Deputy has suggested. I think the whole matter of the treatment of juvenile offenders is one of the very greatest possible importance. I do not know what kind of mental attitude many of the Deputies take towards this question of a Borstal institution. I do not know whether, to use a much-hackneyed word, they visualise exactly what it means. I know that for many years I had a conception that a Borstal institution was quite a different thing from a jail, but I was disillusioned in the matter owing to certain experiences belonging to my lurid past. Like the President of the Executive Council, I had occasion to visit some of these magnificent establishments called jails in which there are Borstal institutions. It happened also, and I do not know whether the President also benefited in that luxurious fashion, that I was housed in a Borstal institution at a time of life long after the experience of those who usually go to such places. There is virtually nothing in a Borstal institution, or in that section of a prison called the Borstal institution, in the regimen, and very little in the manner of life, to distinguish it from an ordinary jail.
I remember at that particular time discussing the matter with one of the warders in that particular jail, which happened to be Lincoln Jail, in which I had the distinguished company of a Deputy of this House who has not taken his seat. On that occasion I was discussing the matter with the warder, who has a great deal of experience with such Borstal institutions, and he said that once that as many as from 90 to 95 per cent. of the boys who are put into a Borstal institution, and who go through the regimen there, return again in later life, and form part of the regular community that passed through that jail. He put it down to the fact that the whole associations of the place were the associations of a jail. He happened to be a person who had given some thought to the matter, and I remember him asking me to undertake a certain task, which I am now discharging. He said: "If you ever have an opportunity, urge that young people who commit offences that have driven them into places like the Borstal institutions, should be kept outside the ordinary jail, for Borstal institutions are failures." I am now discharging the promise I gave. I ask the Minister not only in respect of girl offenders, but of boys, too, in all cases where those who are of tender age are convicted of offences that would take them into what are now called Borstal institutions, that they should be kept out of the ordinary jails altogether, because of the contaminating influences it will bring at their time of life, and the damage that it will cause in after days.
I suggest that the whole matter is deserving of very careful and searching inquiry, with a view to seeing if some different method of treatment could not be adopted in this State. Something should be done, when offenders are at that time of life when evil associations would be very dangerous, whereby they would not be brought into touch with buildings that are generally associated with crime and become, in the course of time, criminals on account of it. As I have said, I am informed that 99 per cent of them become habitués of those places. It was put to me in that connection by warders, that if they once come to this part of the jail, called the Borstal section, they will come back to the jail, but it will not be to that section. They will be regular passers-through of the . That is why I add my plea to that of Deputy Johnson, that the matter should be investigated, in order that all juvenile offenders should be treated in this State differently and kept in different buildings altogether from those which, rightly or wrongly, modern States have found necessary to accord to ordinary criminals.
I am sorry that I have no lurid past to refer to like that of Deputy Figgis. If I had the experience he has had I am sure that anything I have got to say would carry more weight. At all events I rise to support the suggestion by Deputy Johnson, that this is a matter that should be fully inquired into, especially with regard to the segregation of girls, because one knows that during very early life, when it is possible to make strong impressions upon them, the very fact of their being in association with hardened old ladies who go to jail has an extremely bad effect on them. The training is an excellent thing, and I agree it should be continued, but I do say, with Deputy Johnson, that it is a very serious matter to allow any association whatsoever between the young offenders and the older ones. We are all very keen on keeping boys from contact with older criminals, but very little attention, up to the present, has been paid to the question of keeping young girl offenders away from the hardened criminals. I am sure the Government are alive to the seriousness of this matter, and that the suggestion has only got to be made when they will inquire into it, and, if it is possible, keep the young girls and boys out of the ordinary jails.
The commercial community have always taken a serious view of this matter. In fact, they have gone to the extent of advocating, where possible, that lads should not be tried at the same police court as the ordinary offender. If it were possible, we would say unanimously that children should be kept apart from ordinary criminals and separately dealt with, with respect to any crimes they may have committed. Deputy Figgis rather gives me information on this point. I was always under the impression that Borstal institutions were separate institutions, and I find that they are embodied in the ordinary jail procedure.
Borstal institutions and Borstal treatment are two separate things.
I think Deputy Figgis said that there was Borstal treatment in the ordinary jails. That, of course, raises the objection, we all admit, of training juveniles to the jail procedure and the jail methods. One can appreciate that to young people there is nothing so deteriorating as confinement. The greatest amount of exercise and outdoor occupation that can be given is good physically and mentally for them. Confining them in jail is not the best way to treat them, if it can be avoided. I know I can say for the commercial community that anything the Minister would do in that direction would certainly be approved by them.
The older one grows the more one becomes conscious of one's ignorance in many matters. I had an entirely different conception of what the Borstal system was before I heard Deputy Figgis. I had the idea that it was a sort of glorified industrial school, that the occupants were kept apart, that there was no contact with older prisoners—in fact, that it was an entirely different institution. I have been entirely disillusioned. I think it is a dreadful thing to have young people, who may have been convicted for some offences, brought into proximity with old and hardened offenders, who may be pointed out to them as great heroes. I am glad that the case of women has been brought forward, because it is well known that when women commit crimes which are committed by men, they generally do so in accentuated form. I am amazed that such a thing should have gone on for so long. There is general ignorance throughout the country about this Borstal system. I had no idea that it was of this nature. There is nothing more important than that the moral surroundings of the youth of the country should be looked after by the guardians of the nation. It is for us to say that young people should not be brought in contact with criminals of either sex, because, perhaps, they might listen to tales from them of their wonderful feats, and possibly imitate them. I hope the Minister will regard sympathetically what has been said by Deputies Johnson and Figgis and that he will consider this matter, which is one of the most important which could be debated here.
Last evening Deputy Johnson suggested that an inaccurate or misleading reply had been given to a question asked by him some days ago. I would remind him that the question was addressed to the Minister for Finance. The answer must be read in the light of that fact. No applications of the kind mentioned in the question had reached the Minister for Finance. I accept full responsibility for the fact that such applications did not reach him. The applications were based on an assumption with which I could not for a moment agree— that the conditions of the prison staffs here must remain at all times, and in all circumstances, identical with the conditions of the prison staffs in England. That was the basis of the applications and, as I completely rejected such basis, the applications were not forwarded, with any recommendations, pro or con, to the Minister for Finance. The Deputy has preferred not to go in detail into the matters which he rather foreshadowed he would raise to-day, and I will follow his example in that. But I want to make it perfectly clear, on this occasion and in connection with these Estimates, that we will not be bound by the conditions of the prison staffs in England, either with regard to their conditions of pay, their conditions of service, or with regard to the proportions of the staff and the kind of officers which we will have in the staffs of the Irish prisons. I speak with special reference to the positions of stewards in the prison service and the posts of principal warders. The position of steward will be maintained in such places and for such duration as the Board think it necessary to maintain it. The principal wardership is a post which, in our opinion, is needed only in the larger prisons. We reject, and will continue to reject, the contention that such post must be maintained in every prison and that there should be one principal warder to every five ordinary warders. Generally, the personnel of the prison service had better recognise, once and for all, that there is definite severance with the English prison service, that we must stand here on our own legs, that we will decide the proportions of a staff in accordance with our conception of the requirements of the prisons that have to be served by such staff, and that we are not going to be pinned or bound to unwieldy, expensive establishments in excess of what we believe the requirements to be.
As to the Borstal question, Deputy Figgis, who takes such a keen interest in the question of Borstal institutions and Borstal treatment, generally, for offending youth, ought to be aware that the Borstal institute for boys is situate at Clonmel and has no connection whatever with any prison. Consequently, there seems to be a great deal of beating the air and pushing of open doors and general futility of that kind about the remarks he made in that connection. On the question of girl offenders, I adhere to what I said to Deputy Johnson, that the numbers are so small, that the expense of a separate establishment would not be justified. Magistrates, as a rule, do not commit girls between the ages of 16 and 21 years, unless the offence be of a particularly serious nature. There is segregation—segregation, at any rate, to this extent, that the girls are kept apart in a separate wing of the prison, that they have special officers dealing with them and on duty with them, and that they are not brought into contact with convicted adult females.
Does that mean that they may be brought into contact with unconvicted adult females?
I think it does. I think the theory that people are assumed to be innocent until they are found guilty may, perhaps, be over-strained in that connection. I would undertake to see what could be done to make the segregation even more complete than it is at present. Possibly, it will be difficult to avoid some contact with remand female prisoners. There is certainly no contact with convicted female prisoners, and if the amount of contact with women offenders on remand can be lessened, or entirely removed, that will be done Generally, we recognise the desirability of not bringing young persons into contact with hardened offenders.
The Minister speaks of the smallness of the number. Could he state the average number?
The average would be between 7 and 9. One point was referred to yesterday by Deputy Wilson—that is the item of rent. I think it is a constant item of £285. It was £285 last year and it is down again at that figure this year. That is a sum for head rent of old leases of premises.
Question put and agreed to.