Allister Exchange with Justice Minister on Prison Reform
16 November 2011
Please find below the exchange between TUV leader Jim Allister and the Justice Minister which exposed plans to remove references to Her Majesty’s prisons in Northern Ireland and the Crown from Prison Service uniforms.
Mr Allister: A report of such length is bound to contain some positive matters, and so it does. However, its overall preponderance does not point the way to a better, more effective Prison Service. There has been much talk about why prison exists. Of course, it has and should have a rehabilitative effect and purpose but, first and foremost, prison is for punishment. You go to prison because you have offended against the law and deserve to go to prison. When you go to prison, you are there, of course, to see whether you can be rehabilitated but, first and foremost, to be punished for the crime that you have committed. It is the total absence of deterrents that hallmarks this report.
When you go through, for example, what the review team says are the desirable criteria for recruiting staff, the focus is on staff who understand prisoners, who will work with prisoners and who will accommodate prisoners. That is all very beneficial in its place, but it is not the primary objective of a prison regime.
You do not have to go very far into the report — only to page 9 — to find its political aspect. You read that prisons have political importance. It states:
“That is why this review was a key part of the Hillsborough Agreement”.
Some who are uneasy with what the report contains should remember that they helped to bring the review about by agreeing to it as part of the Hillsborough agreement. Their fingerprints are all over it, in that regard. The report states that the review was a key part of the Hillsborough agreement and:
“it is why the reform of the prison system, like the reform of policing, is an essential part of the move to a normalised society”.
What do those words mean? We all know about the reform of policing. It had certain key components. Will the same key components be part of the reform of the Prison Service? One of the key components of the reform of policing was an exit strategy to reduce the number of Protestants in the service. Is that subtle language, which states that the reform of the Prison Service must be “like the reform of policing”, being used to cover that?
We also know that the reform of policing involved a name change. Are we going to have a name change of the prisons? Are they no longer going to be Her Majesty’s prisons? Perhaps the Minister, in replying, will confirm to us most robustly that that will not happen. I will listen with interest to see whether he does. Like the reform of policing, is the badge of the Prison Service to be changed? Is the crown to go? Let us hear from the Minister a robust denial that that will be any part of the agenda. When we read that the reform of the Prison Service must be like the reform of policing, alarm bells ring very loudly indeed. We wait with interest to see whether that is part of the machinations that are afoot.
It is no surprise, of course, that those who peopled the prisons and used them as colleges of terrorism should be the chief cheerleaders for a report that would radically reform the prisons, like the police were reformed. It is no surprise at all that their agenda continues to be the utter destruction of the Prison Service, which has been staffed by very brave people who faced the violence and terrorism of the IRA. We had to remember many of them at the weekend because of that. There are too many in the House who would trample on those memories as part of their political agenda to destroy the Prison Service.
During the Minister’s response to the debate the following exchange took place:
Mr Allister: So that we are absolutely clear, is the Minister saying that he anticipates an end to our prisons being called “Her Majesty’s prisons” and that he anticipates an end to the crown being part of the symbol of the Prison Service? Will he be clear on that? If he is saying those things, I want to tell him that there are many in the unionist community who will be appalled at the direction in which he is taking us.
Mr Ford: I think that it is a pity that we are getting hung up on symbols. It is the only issue that anybody has wanted to intervene on during my speech this afternoon. I said that we are looking at a process of fundamental and end-to-end reform that will affect every part of the working of the Prison Service and its culture. In those circumstances, although these issues are operational matters for the Prison Service, it has to consider them as it looks for the appropriate way to run in the years ahead.
