“Our prisons are not working” was the title of an article written for Reality magazine in 2001. And, it seems, little has changed since then. Fr Tony O’Riordan SJ is a visiting chaplain to a number of prisons in Dublin and is also Director of the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice. Here he presents the case from the point of view of a prisoner’s mother.
Mothers and children
Mothers often shed tears of worry and anguish for their children in public. Many of us will have seen or can easily imagine common scenarios such as a mother in a hospital who has just received devastating news about her child’s illness, or parents leaving their children at the door of a school on their first day.
Regularly, mothers can be seen weeping openly at airports, as they bid farewell to a son or daughter embarking on a foreign trip. Parents worry and fret for their children – it is part of the package of being a parent.
This worry is particularly acute when care for their son or daughter is entrusted to someone else or an institution, such as school or hospital. In all these scenarios, the pain and worries of parents follow a similar pattern. Now, while many will understand the situation of parents in these situations, few will think of the particular situation of a parent who sheds tears in a court room as their child is sentenced to a term in prison.
The situation of a parent whose son or daughter is sentenced to imprisonment is, in some respects, similar to that of any parent who sees the care of their child taken over by someone else or some other institution.
Prison is a place of harm
However, imprisonment is different – prison is a place of harm. Unlike schools or hospitals, which are places whose purpose is care, healing and development, prisons exist for punishment. The harm that prison inflicts includes the material deprivations of prison life, isolation from family and friends, and the social stigma that imprisonment carries long after a sentence is complete. In addition to these foreseen harms, any prisoner risks becoming a victim of crime such as theft, robbery, assault, exposure to drug use and more rarely serious physical injury, rape and murder.
The anxieties which the realities of prison life might produce in any parent of a prisoner are added to by the fact that prison life is largely hidden. Although the administration of justice is carried out in public, imprisonment and prison life occurs behind high walls. Not only are prisoners in institutions designed to keep people in, they also operate to keep family, friends and loved ones out. Although a weekly visit is allowed, this takes place in a special visiting area. Increasingly such visits take place behind glass screens, where moments of simple intimacy are restricted. Family members never get to see the parts of the institution where their loved ones spend most of their time. The cells, the landings, the yards, the education and workshop areas, all remain areas that must be imagined rather than seen firsthand.
They get no help in prison
Yet parents, especially mothers, visit their sons regularly in prison, often making long journeys with other younger children. They often feel powerless and guilty. They sometimes feel that they have failed as parents. They know their sons need help to deal with lots of problems such as addiction and the legacy of childhood trauma, and they hope that this might be available in prison. However, increasingly many hear that their sons are being locked in their cells for twenty-three hours a day for their own safety. So they can’t get the help they need in prison. They also know that once released from prison, their sons face an uphill battle of waiting lists of maybe up to a year for drug treatment, maybe longer for somewhere to live.
Such parents also know that few in society seem to care about what happens to people we send to prison, at least not enough to exert pressure for change. Public concern and powerful pressure is constantly brought to bear to improve the quality of public services such as hospitals and schools, however, the same concern does not exist in regard to prisons. And yet perhaps there are many reasons why we should be more concerned about the reality of life in prison and the way we use prison. Everyone would be better off if we used prison for serious offenders or offenders who do not cooperate with other community punishments.
Chaotic childhoods
Each year we send about ten thousand people to prison. Few are guilty of the most serious crimes such as murder, rape or serious violence. Most people we send to prison are young men from poor backgrounds. They have had chaotic childhoods that have left them scarred. Many are so hurt by life that taking drugs becomes a way to dull the pain. Soon they realise that drugs cause more problems. Yet help to overcome addiction is extremely hard to get. Most people we send to prison are sent for non-violent crimes and often they spend short periods in prison. I know one young man who last year spent five different periods in prison, and each time he was released he was homeless and still addicted to drugs.
A vicious and hopeless cycle
And so these young men get locked into a vicious and hopeless cycle of addiction, petty crime and prison. A mother of one young prisoner who had just been released said to me recently that she felt that her son had just moved into another prison of hopelessness and despair, and there seemed no easy escape. She feared that because he wasn’t getting the help he needed he would be back in prison before long.
A Christian view?
Christian tradition places strong emphasis on care for those in prison; this concern must extend to the parents, especially mothers of the many young men who long for a chance to redeem themselves. Part of expressing this concern must include rethinking the way we view prisoners – perhaps a start might be to view each prisoner as some mother’s son. From this might flow a concern for such mothers once prisoners are released, and may even lead us to consider the challenging fact that these prisoners are part of the Christian family, and that we share some responsibility for assisting in their integration.
This article first appeared in The Messenger (March 2009), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
