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ON TUESDAY 9 December 2014, there were 21 boys detained within the adult prison system in Ireland. Eight of those were 17-year-old boys detained on remand (awaiting trial) in St Patrick’s Institution, a prison which has received serious criticism dating as back as 1985, and which the Inspector of Prisons has stated unequivocally must be closed and its name “consigned to history”. Another 13 are detained under sentence in a separate wing of Wheatfield Place of Detention, where conditions and regimes are better, but it is nevertheless an adult prison.
Detaining children in adult prison facilities has been condemned by international human rights monitoring bodies. It is contrary to international human rights law, and is utterly unacceptable in any country which professes to adhere to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Prison is an environment and regime which is wholly inappropriate for the detention of children. Young people have the highest rates of reoffending, but they also have the greatest capacity for change – scientific evidence proves this. The right interventions, at the right time, with this age group can have a profound positive impact on the future directions of their lives, away from criminality and towards participation and citizenship – which in turn means less crime and fewer potential victims; the wrong interventions only serve to compound the marginalisation and social exclusion which underlies most offending behaviour. And prison is the wrong intervention with this age group.
A dark chapter in Ireland’s history
There is a good news story here: hard-won commitments to end the imprisonment of children in St Patrick’s Institution will be met in early 2015, as the first phase of building at the children detention facilities at Oberstown in north Dublin is completed. This will bring to a close a particularly dark chapter in Ireland’s response to offending by young people.
The children detention school model seeks not only to contain but to address the causes of offending behaviour in this age group. Ireland’s children detention school system, under the Irish Youth Justice Service, which itself now sits within the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, has the expressed goal of being a model of best practice, focussed on care, education and rehabilitation. This is very positive.
Nevertheless, it is vital to ensure that the detention or imprisonment of a child (whether on remand or under sentence) is only ever used as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time, as required by the Children Act 2001. IPRT, along with the Ombudsman for Children, the Children’s Rights Alliance, EPIC (Empowering People in Care) and many other youth justice advocates, is concerned about the overuse of detention of children for welfare reasons.
Detention, like imprisonment, must be reserved for the most serious offences and for those offenders for whom the range of alternatives – including day centre orders, probation orders, mentoring orders – are deemed not appropriate. Judges who decide to send under-18s to detention must state their reasons for doing so in an open court. This is the law.
Regime appropriate to age group
Often children are remanded to detention because they fail to meet their bail conditions, such as a failure to turn up to the right place, at the right time. A formal, sufficiently resourced and nationwide system of bail support is needed to support vulnerable children with complex personal or familial challenges to successfully manage their bail conditions, thus reducing the number of children being detained on remand.
For the small number of cases where detention is deemed necessary, it should be in a regime appropriate to this age group. With the expected transfer of 17-year-olds from St Patrick’s and Wheatfield to Oberstown, it is imperative that the ethos at the children detention school campus remains resolutely focused on the provision of adequate expert therapeutic care, education and welfare, and staffed by sufficient numbers of highly trained and dedicated staff, fully conversant with the necessary skills as well as knowledge of legislation, regulations, policies, procedures and protocols. It is crucial that the adult prison ethos and regime does not transfer with the 17-year-olds to Oberstown.
A potential for abuse
Our shared past has taught us that wherever there exists a closed institution housing a vulnerable population there is the potential for abuse. Informed by our experience of inspection and accountability in the adult prison system, IPRT strongly believes that robust and regular independent inspections are imperative, as well as provision of age-appropriate complaints mechanisms. The complaints remit of the Ombudsman for Children now extends not only to the children detention schools but also St Patrick’s Institution and Wheatfield Place of Detention, and this system is working well.
Where the protection of children is concerned, inspection reports must be published regularly and promptly. While IPRT is confident in the rigorous approach of HIQA, which is tasked with inspecting the children detention facilities in Ireland, an inspection report on the facilities has not been published since Nov 2013 (on an inspection carried out in June 2013). Monitoring must be adequately resourced to provide robust reports, preferably on unannounced inspections, with increased frequency. An approach which measures the quality of detention by assessing the outcomes on re-entry to the community is particularly appropriate.
Children in the detention school system will often have had an experience of the care system, with many under HSE care at the time of their committal, and some coming directly into the detention system from secure care. This group is among the most vulnerable group of children in Ireland; many of the traumatic factors which led to the children being taken into care in the first place are also at root of their offending behaviour. The children detention schools system invests its resources into addressing these challenges, and what can be extremely challenging behaviour of these young people.
Therefore, we have a duty to support these young people leaving detention in their efforts to desist from offending behaviour, through the provision of aftercare, safe housing and support, and to ensure they do not return to the very chaotic conditions which gave rise to offending behaviour in the first place. It could change their lives, and in turn lead to safer communities for everyone.
Deirdre Malone is Executive Director of the Irish Penal Reform Trust: www.iprt.ie
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Hats off to all the student nurses out there
@geraldo: They are doing an absolutely amazing job, considering they are only young people in trainng to be health care professionals. And being unpaid for their work !
@geraldo: where will they cash that ???
As far away from these shores as possible while we slow clap them in our time of need.
@ray murphy: ah.. one who knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing. Not all expenditure is monitory.
@ray murphy: I’m not in a position to implement change so for now lll just show gratitude if that’s ok
Prehaps move nurses in management capacity, back to front line, this pandemic doesn’t operate on a 9to5
@herp: that’s what they are doing. Nurse managers already work in direct patient care
@clairebear: funny I doubt working nights, over Xmas, 9 to 5 some with their own self importance, meanwhile frontline decimated.
@herp: You’re wrong. I doubt you have a clue what’s going on.
@Hotirish: clairebear is totally correct
@herp: I’m a nurse I know what goes on. They might be mon-fri but they are running units and wards and yes they are actively out on the floor
@clairebear: yes like my statement said this pandemic isn’t 9to5 thousand of staff out sick, prehaps help on the frontline
@Hotirish: no I’m right instead of chat meetings holding folders, prehaps hold a hand
@herp: Doesn’t matter what you doubt. You didn’t know nurse managers are back in direct patient care and when informed you make an assumption about what hours they work. What’s wrong with just saying that you know nothing about it ? No shame in not knowing something.
@Tommy Roche: I guarantee that’s not the case
@clairebear: running them into the ground more like
@herp: *perhaps. I gave you the benefit of the doubt first time.
About time they pulled them. Far too many nurses in office jobs while we struggle on the ground.
@Adrienne O Kelly Byrne: how often do we see the CPCs? Once a week for a brief 30min chat.
This is completely unfair my training is vital for me to become the best nurse I can be before I head into my 4th year to become a intern.
We are a help not a hindrance!
@Cha Ni Bhráonáin: some hospitals with Covid everyone asked wear scrubs if on frontline dealing with patients, management don’t says it all
They are always at the heart of every health service & kudos to all these unsung heroes or A.K.A. The Nurses
@rendams: hats off to nurses, who’s praises are regularly sung, and rightly so!
The true unsung heroes are those who make it possible for the nurses to do their jobs; healthcare assistants, cleaners, caterers, ward clerks, supplies, clinical engineers, maintenance, etc, etc.
@rendams: and where will we cash those kudos ?!
@rendams: ah you forgot Healthcare assistant, cleaners, ect no i in team
@ray murphy: Geesh you are a bit of a broken record
Are siptu seriously arguing that these qualified nurses shouldn’t be redeployed during the current surge of cases? And are we really training student nurses who are “furious” that the first job of medics – to preserve lives – is being put before a short training placement? I’m really not sure what this “outraged” response from siptu says about them as a union or, if they are to be believed, their members. Somehow I suspect their “frustrated and furious” student nurse membership might actually consist of a single trade unionist student.
@Sara Davis: if they pay students as per last summer surely they would have more hands on deck?? Rather than delaying placement.. altho bright side is they don’t have to repay the time!
@Sara Davis: I don’t think they’re outraged because of the redeployment, more so that it was only decided the day before their placements were to start
The decision to cancel all placements is a mistake. Not all student nurses are working in general hospitals. My partner is a student physicatric nurse and had her placement was cancelled last night. She is training in a more community/residential setting and could easily carry on with it. She has only limited interaction with her official trainer ie a 5min phone call here n there. Last march her placement was cancelled to but was hired as a hca, this time around their saying its just for a 2 week period but this could really run on into the late spring be the numbers are down again and they could possibly return to training.
@Hugh Mc Donnell: supernumerary nursing students must be supervised by a registered nurse at all times on placement. Also, residential settings have coronavirus outbreaks frequently. No one should be expected to work unpaid with a risk to their health and their families health
@Slaney Cox: rubbish doesn’t happen.
@Hugh Mc Donnell: get over it. Far too dangerous in community setting s also
@ray murphy: well I’m on my final year of the degree and I always had a preceptor (teaching nurse) within the unit I am practicing in. But I suppose you are the expert
@Hugh Mc Donnell: my daughter is in 3rd year but not on placement in the next two weeks, but some of her fellow students are. Their worry is that they have made arrangements to be in the hospital working long full day shifts and some would have child care sorted and some have even to relocate while on placement and all this goes out the windows and, as I understand it, the placements have to be completed and signed off to pass each year and without the hours in the various areas you will not be given a pass, unless they change the requirement or have these placements later in the year after the existing scheduled placements.
Based upon what I heard 3rd years can contribute in a roll somewhere between HCA and nurse and I really cannot remember that much about 1st and 2nd year – but when someone calls “nurse, nurse” an student nurse can provide some of the comfort while waiting for a qualified nurse to attend if necessary.
@ray murphy: it is not dangerous in the settings my partner works at she has tested negative and vaccinations are been rolled out. Once good hygiene takes place along with ppe wearing everyone should be safe.
Meanwhile nursing interns are kept on the frontline and paid a measly €10 per hour
All nurses, carers and doctors are absolute fantastic and deserve so much more than this country can ever give them. Yes, student nurses should get paid for their work during this pandemic but this is also going to be the best training they will ever receive. The experience they are getting will be invaluable to them as they progress in their chosen career.
I know a nursing lecturer who has returned to the wards because she knows it the right thing to do. That’s where she is needed most. She cannot teach the student nurses what they can learn on the wards right now.
I could be wrong but have the unions not been saying for weeks that student nurses are not fully trained for the horrors of COVID on the front line (a fair point) so surely this is a sensible decision by the government that should be welcomed??
always moaning about something
Again we were last to know about it last night and only last week one of the hospitals made all their students quit their part time jobs because of cross contamination. Now they have no job and no placement. This happened to us last March so why they didn’t have a plan b is a joke. We have lost over 400 hours of clinical placement since last March. How are we going to be competent nurses and will we get any of the huge amount of money we pay back since we aren’t getting the education we are paying for? They knew I’m December the numbers were gigh so why not delay placements and send us out as HCAs to ease the pressure? We are always the after thought.
@Lauren Masterson: very true..
@Lauren Masterson: my partner just got her first covid jab how will she get the second when she will probably be sent to a different placement and and miss the roll out plus she hasn’t worked part-time for fear of picking up Covid-19 prior to her test. Are they permitted to start work elsewhere while the placements are cancelled?
@Lauren Masterson: with all due respect to you & your fellow student nurses I think the old fashioned method of Nurse Training was the best way for Student nurses to learn … 8 weeks in block ( in the classroom ) to learn the bare necessities & then onto the Wards to become part of the workforce …. to help look after patients & to learn from those above you , ie first year, second year & third year trainees + Staff nurses & Ward sisters , & two weeks in block x twice yearly .. There were no Carers in my day so total care of patients was up to all the nursing staff & worked very well.. Supernumerary nurses don’t benefit the patients are they are just on placement to Observe not to care for patients ..
What happened to all those people hired from “on call for Ireland”? Oh that’s right…it was only a PR stunt.
@Adam Conroy: back in Australia
Just to clarify these nurses aren’t solely teaching. They are staff already working on the wards who have a student attached to them. The reason for this is they see students as slowing down the staff. So this action won’t result in any extra staff on the wards.
@James Leonard: my understanding is that the CPCs will be redeployed to wards?? Who currently are not working on wards..
very difficult for student nurses. during my training we spent most of our time on wards . thats where the real learning is. very difficult situation for them to be in but necessary to use all the trained staff where needed. awful situation.
@Aoife Pedreschi: and we got paid as soon as we started working on the wards too
Just use and abuse them by the looks of it
We are all in this together,just some more than others, when it comes to pay and risk.
very difficult for student nurses. during my training we spent most of our time on wards . thats where the real learning is. very difficult situation for them to be in but necessary to use all the trained staff where needed. awful situation.
Smacks to me of a purely political move. I believe Sinn Féin were due to bring a motion to the Dail on Wednesday over the ongoing issue of student pay. Perhaps Minister Donnelly didn’t want or certainly need another bashing, wouldn’t do the government any favours eh
Where can we volunteer Please.
Total praise to all nurses and students helping out there.
Still baffled that student nurses are not paid in this pandemic, it’s bad enough nurses are not paid in normal circumstances but in a pandemic PAY THEM!
A two week break will be good to recharge the body so take it student nurses. U all deserve the breather
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