There is not a very great increase in the amount of money demanded in this Vote and we can safely say that whatever increase is asked for is going into a very worthy cause, namely, the salaries of the Gardaí, who deserve a higher rate than they have been getting for many years. Nevertheless, we must always bear in mind that there are very many people who have even worse salaries than the average Civic Guard and I must say that to the shame of the Government and of the system under which we work at the moment.
I believe there can be quite a lot of reforms in the different branches of the Department of Justice, from the courts down to the humble court clerks. It has been pointed out that reforms can be brought about. I am not a lawyer and do not like to meddle with a problem I do not know something about, but I believe we could simplify the court procedure. I remember reading some few months ago where a crowd of able lawyers and senior counsel decided amongst themselves that the time was well overdue when this revision should be brought about and something new should take the place of the cumbersome legal system we had and the Acts which may be yet brought into force, though passed 300 or 400 years ago.
In regard to those who enforce the law, the Civic Guards, the increase in pay is definitely welcome, especially in the case of new recruits, and will not be begrudged to them by anyone. During the past year, there has been a large recruitment for the Gardaí and, let me say in favour of the Minister for Justice, the men have been picked on their merits. I can vouch for the fact that there has been very little, if any, political influence of any kind as far as my locality is concerned. Young men have been brought into the Gardaí and everything has been taken into consideration. If a young fellow has a good athletic record, he gets a certain number of marks and average education will do. That gives the poor man's son a chance of getting in at the bottom of the ladder and trying to climb to the top in the years before him. Whatever other criticism I may have of the Minister and the Department, I can definitely have none as far as that is concerned.
In regard to transfers of Gardaí from one station to another, it is claimed by the Department and the Government that that is a wise thing to do, as to leave a Garda or a sergeant in some place for a number of years may make him too intimate with certain people and hostile to others, so it has been thought that an occasional shift around is for the good of the locality and the policeman concerned.
Here we meet with the trouble which the Civic Guards, the sergeants and everybody else meet with, just as well as the Government—that is, the trouble of housing. The housing problem is so acute, houses are so scarce, that a Civic Guard, on his moderate salary, can ill-afford to get a house when he moves from one place to another. It is true that in places a Guard may be leaving a house and the incoming policeman may get first preference, but then there is the matter of taste to be considered, and occasionally the incoming Guard may not be anxious to take over the vacant house.
I remember last year, in my first contribution to the debate on the Vote for the Department of Justice, I suggested that the Minister, at the earliest opportunity, should build blocks of houses in every town and keep some of those places exclusively for members of the Garda who are shifted backwards and forwards from district to district. This system of having Government-controlled houses was adopted years ago by prisons authorities. We find that in the prisons all over this country there are a few houses which are handed over first to the governor of the jail, then to the chief warder and then there are two or three or nine or ten houses as the case may be according to the size of the jail, and they are used by the warders. When a warder retires the house automatically becomes the property of the Government and it is turned over to some other warder who may be living in an outside house.
That would be an easy way out of the difficulty of housing the Guards. If that simple system could be put into operation, it would ease the minds of policemen when they are shifted from one station to another. I appreciate that for the past few years it was practically impossible to attempt any venture like this and I am offering it only as a suggestion for the future. If the Minister were to adopt that system, it would serve a very useful purpose and satisfy quite a lot of people.
The next thing we come to is crime. Some people say that crime is in the blood; a father may be a criminal, his son may be a criminal and even the grandson may be a criminal. We do not know whether that is right or not. I come from an area where we have a very small amount of crime. It is a rural locality. I got the facts within the last few weeks and I find that we have an average of 23 persons in that large section along the western seaboard — Mayo, Galway, Roscommon, Sligo, Leitrim, Donegal and parts of Monaghan—who may be regarded as prisoners. That is a very small number to hold in jail from such a vast area. We find crime more in the cities, especially juvenile crime.
In the cities juveniles have more chances of becoming criminals. I think juvenile crime can be blamed on two things. The first is the absolute necessity which prevails in many poor, humble homes. I will not say I am perfectly right in that, but I saw, no later than yesterday when I was coming into the city, one example which may be worth relating. Apparently out of pure necessity a young lad made the first move in a criminal life. I saw that young lad climbing on the back of a slowly moving lorry and he chucked down sods of turf on the roadway, then he collected them and ran with them into a house, where his father and mother probably had no money to buy the turf and probably were not able to have a fire. That may or may not be the case.
That young fellow, seeing his first step in petty theft so successful, will probably be encouraged to do other things of a similar nature. He will be encouraged to steal bigger things and then, when he reaches 15 years or 17 years, he will follow a life of adventure and he will begin to steal in his own interests. I am glad to say that 95 per cent. and even 97 per cent. of the people who are in poor circumstances would definitely flog a youngster who was caught doing a thing like that. Those people deserve every credit. Most of the fathers and mothers, even though they may be hungry and have no fire, would not tolerate their youngsters stealing. If the parents knew that the turf the youngster brought into the house had been stolen, they would flog him almost to death. There is no doubt, however, that such small beginnings help to make the juvenile criminal and, once started on that career, it is very hard to stop him.
Then we have the type of criminal who comes from a bad strain, bad blood. He will go definitely out for a life of crime and to alter that criminal and make him reform is a very hard job. It is debatable if it ever could be done.
We are told that crime has increased. It has been proved that in the cities it has increased much more than among the rural population, but that is quite natural, because in the cities large masses of people are gathered together and it is only to be expected that petty theft, pocket picking, jewellery snatching, house and shop breaking, will be carried on in the larger centres of population. These things happen in the everyday lives of the younger and the older generations in the towns and cities. To bring about some system of reform of those criminals is the task of men who have dealt with criminals, who have been over criminals for years. It will take men of that type to carry through any system of reform in the case of first offenders and severe punishment for those who insist on committing crime.
As regards our jails, I do not intend, like my colleague, Deputy Cafferky, to say much about them beyond what I have seen of our prisons, and I will put that as briefly as possible. I think the prisons in Eire are definitely 100 years behind the times. They are old, dilapidated and cold. There is no comfort for the staff of the prison or for the prisoners. I can safely say, and perhaps others who have seen the inside of a prison will agree with me, that every man inside the walls of a prison can be regarded as a prisoner, from the governor down. As regards the staffs, the off-time hours they have, even if they go abroad, are of little use to them. The close association of the prisoners and the warders tends to bring about the feeling that they are all under the same roof and one should not look down upon the other, as they are all practically carrying one brand.
As regards the prison staffs in Eire, nobody can complain in any way about the manner in which they carry out their duties, and that must be definitely said. So far as my association goes with governors and warders, I have found them all right, but the regulations under which they work are definitely all wrong. These regulations must be altered and prison reform must be brought about if we are to make any effort at the reformation of first offenders and the proper punishment of those who insist that they will be criminals and will go to jail simply and solely for the sake of being there and being able to boast about it when they come out. There are men who boast that they have spent so many years of their life behind prison bars. Old jailbirds have been known to fly into a rage because another prisoner boasted that he could prove he spent some months or some years longer in jails than they did. If one man spent 14 years of his life in jail, it would anger him to hear that some other crook had spent 15½ years of his life there.
Prisoners of that type cannot be put in the same class as the youth who, in a moment of weakness perhaps, will steal a bicycle or a little money. My belief is that first offenders who have been found guilty of petty crimes, which nevertheless are crimes, should get a suspensory sentence and a chance should be given to them to see if they will reform within a period of say 12 months and make restitution for the value of the property which they have stolen. It would be much better to deal with first offenders in that way than to compel them to associate with the hardened type of criminal in jail, as such an association can only have the result of breaking down their morale. I have heard it said that when a man is convicted of an offence for the first time and is sent to jail his thoughts there are devoted to one or other of two things. He either gets repentant and decides to turn over a new leaf, or else he starts plotting and decides that when he comes out, he will commit another criminal offence but by entirely different methods from those which he employed in committing his first offence so that he will be able to lead the authorities up the garden path. Whether that is right or wrong I do not know but I think there must be something in it when we remember the number of prisoners who are in and out of jail continually. To keep more or less innocent first offenders in close contact for six or perhaps 12 months with hardened criminals will definitely bring these first offenders to the same level. I believe, therefore, that there should be some system in each prison under which first offenders would be kept in one section where every effort would be made to reform them and the hardened criminals kept in another section.
I will say that the quantity of food allowed to each prisoner, no matter what his offence may be, at present is not sufficient. It is not a very nice thing to keep men from the time they get up in the morning at 6.30 until they go to bed at 7.30 or 8 o'clock continually with empty stomachs. It merely means that they are carrying forward a good healthy appetite from one meal to another. They never get sufficient food and there is continual "grouse" as to the amount and the quality of the food which they get. Deputy Cafferky suggested that a different type of utensils might be utilised and I fully agree with him. Even though it may cost a little extra, I think if there was an arrangement under which the prisoners could eat in one hall or room and if a better type of utensil were provided, it would make those of them who can be reformed realise that they are not enemies of society, that society will not oust them for all time, that they can take up their place again in the world and, perhaps with a little effort, carry on as good model citizens.
Another matter to which I wish to call the attention of the Minister is the degrading type of clothing which these men have to wear. There may have been an excuse for that during the emergency when the quality of cloth generally was of an inferior type but there cannot be the same excuse in normal times. It is absolutely amazing to observe the change which takes place in the appearance of a man after he has changed from his own clothes, which he was wearing on entering the prison, into the prison suit. I think some effort should be made to provide prisoners with better-fitting clothes and clothes which might be a little warmer. The same remarks apply to prison shoes. The shoes are definitely not of a good standard. What is the object of compelling a prisoner to wear a bad suit of clothes or a bad pair of shoes and compelling him to work under such conditions. I will admit that they do not do much work. To those who say that prisoners have to work hard in jail, I would reply that the average man does as much work in a day, or a day and a half outside, as the average prisoner will do in a week. I have personal experience of that and I shall not allow anybody to contradict me. The fact that a prisoner is compelled to wear bad shoes or bad clothes leaves him liable to disease. He may contract turberculosis, pneumonia or influenza and in the long run the cost of treating these diseases will be much more than the cost of supplying him with proper boots and clothing in the first instance.
Turning from the prisoners to the officials who have to supervise the prisoners, I think that much could be done to improve their conditions also. They have their "grouse" and I think that when you find men or women in this country grumbling, there is generally some grievance which gives rise to that grumbling. For the past five or six years, we have had complaints from many people, but I think the warders in our jails have every reason to complain as to their conditions. One regulation in existence at the moment prescribes the hour at which these men have to be inside the prison walls each night. I think the hour is 11 p.m. I think it is unfair, especially to the younger warders, who may like once or twice a week to go to a dance or to visit a cinema, to compel them to be back at 11 o'clock. If an extension could be given of an hour or an hour and a half even for two Sunday nights every month or for two or three week nights every month, it would be welcomed very much by these warders.
The next suggestion which warders make is that when moving prisoners from one jail to another, a warder should be entitled to wear his ordinary clothes and should be supplied with some identification badge, which he can use to prove his authority—a badge like that used by the secret service or the United States Federal Agents, as the case may be. He should not be compelled to wear his uniform so as to attract the notice of everybody who is passing because it is true of our people, and will be for years to come, I suppose, that the sight of a prison warder fills them with wrath. They say immediately: "He is a prison warder and no good. His job is to keep Irishmen in jail," even though the warder may be far better than those who criticise him. If these two concessions could be granted: first, an hour longer to remain out during their off-hours, and, secondly, permission to wear ordinary clothing when going to courts to collect prisoners or removing prisoners from one jail to another, the Minister would go very far towards satisfying the wants of some of these prison warders. I heard no complaints as to warders' pay.
They seem to think they were fairly well paid. Of course, more money would probably be asked for, but these concessions would be sought much more eagerly than any concessions in relation to cash.
The matter of the facilities for recreation in prisons is one which will have to be improved. The continuous walk in a circle for three hours at one time and for two and a half hours at another will get on the nerves of anybody. It serves no useful purpose and I suggest that in each jail a handball alley should be erected or a small football field should be provided. I personally would prefer a handball alley, or two, so that where 20, 30 or 40 men are in prison—or 200 or 300, as in Mountjoy—they could have handball tournaments and would have an interest in something other than this continuous walking round in circles, which merely serves to make them cranky and tends to develop in them a hatred of society. I understand that a handball alley has recently been erected in Portlaoighise and I hope the Minister will continue on that line and provide similar facilities in other prisons, even in Sligo, the humblest and smallest prison in Éire. If his inspector goes into Sligo Jail he will find that, for £50, he could erect a beautiful handball alley, because the side-walls are there already. Such a facility would do much to brighten the life of the poor individual who has to spend a year, 18 months or two years, or even two weeks, inside prison bars. Further, an inside recreation hall should be provided, because it is wrong that men, if they have a handball alley, should have to play handball on a wet day. If a game like basket-ball, as played in the Army, were introduced, it would be very useful. Little competitions could be organised in the jail and the warders would be only too willing to supervise them. Games of cards, with whist drives and darts competitions and concerts—it is all these little things which in jails are the great things.
Finally, if the Minister would grant permission to smoke, he would be doing much to ease the lot of prisoners.
I understand that in England this reform has been brought about. I do not know whether that it true, but in the book I Did Penal Servitude it is stated that prisoners have been allowed cigarettes—three, four and five a day. The first thing the Minister will ask is: “Why we should give cigarettes to criminals? We could give them to eight out of ten prisoners, but there will always be two to whom we cannot give them, because, if they get matches, they will set fire to mattresses and so on.” It is, however, worth the chance because there is no doubt that any prisoner who is anxious for a smoke will provide himself in some way with a smoke. The Minister spent a longer period in prison than I and he must admit that smokes will be produced. A cigarette butt may be thrown unthinkingly on the ground by a warder who should not be smoking on duty and who fears that the Governor is coming upon him. That butt will be picked up and smoked by a prisoner. To those of us who are habitual smokers, it is understandable that to a man in jail a cigarette is something which does him an amount of good, and I have heard prisoners say that they would go without their break-fast or their dinner for a smoke. I believe that to be true, and why, then, should we deprive them of this little luxury?
It was said by Deputy Giles that we are coddling these prisoners and that if we keep on at it, we should be running hotels instead of jails and queues of criminals would be lined up outside waiting to get in. I do not believe that. There are types who will always be in and out of jail and who frequently will have to go to a jail through very little fault on their part, but, instead of grinding them down and keeping them cut away in such and awful manner from what they have been used to, an effort should be made to go at least halfway towards easing their lot. I understand that in Portlaoighise, although it may have its faults and although things have happened within the last year there that I shall hate while I live, definite improvements have been made. We have been told that a radio has been installed and several types of games are being allowed, with the result that life generally there has been fairly well improved, but there is still a lot of room for further improvement.
I listened with interest to Deputy Moran on the subject of land registry. He is perfectly right. The number of people who have allowed their titles to land to lie there simply because the charge for registering is too high is amazing. The solicitors of Ireland have a very bad name at present because everybody thinks it is the lawyer who takes all the money and walks away with a man's £5, £6 or £10, when, in reality, it is the stamp duty which the Government demands which is responsible. It is unduly high and could easily be reduced to suit the poorer type of person dealing with a small holding or a small house.