‘More stable’ Maghaberry sees a cut in prisoner complaints to watchdog

MORE than 20 complaints a day were made on average to a prisons watchdog by inmates at Northern Ireland’s three main jails last year, new figures reveal.

The Prisoner Ombudsman’s office was forwarded 1,953 eligible grievances from the Prison Service for resolution — a 55% decrease on last year.

The drop was partially explained by the more stable situation at high security Maghaberry Prison in Co Antrim and improvements in complaints handling, the watchdog said.

The vast majority of the 7,797 grievances lodged with the Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS) from Hydebank, Maghaberry and Magilligan inmates between April 2017 and March of this year were dealt with internally.

All but 167 of the 1,953 received by the Ombudsman were from separated prisoners on Roe three and four landings at Maghaberry Prison.

The report said the 167 complaints from integrated non-paramilitary prisoners were “commensurate with a lower prison population”.

Republican inmates held on Roe 4 at Maghaberry make up less than 2% of the total prison population but account for almost 90% of the complaints received by the Ombudsman.

On April 1 this year there were 1,475 people in the three local prisons.

The Ombudsman made 134 recommendations for improvement in relation to prisoners’ complaints — 76% of these were accepted by the NIPS, 9% rejected with 15% awaiting decision.

Ivor Dunne, chair of the Northern Ireland Prison Officers’ Association, said the complaints “take up a vast amount of resources, time and money”.

Echoing this view, TUV leader Jim Allister said: “Investigating these complaints ties up all sorts of resources and every single one costs money.

“The nature and scale of some of them suggest a certain degree of orchestration for the purposes of clogging up the system.”

During the 12-month period investigations were also launched into three deaths in custody in May, August and September of 2017.

One involved a prisoner at Magilligan and the other two were Maghaberry inmates. Two of the deaths appeared to be self-inflicted, while the third was from natural causes.

Prisoner Ombudsman Tom McGonigle retired on August 31, 2017 after four years in the post.

The process to select his successor has been held and a number of suitable candidates were identified.

However, without a Justice Minister in post a permanent replacement cannot be appointed.

The Chief Inspector of Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland (CJINI) Brendan McGuigan is overseeing the work of the Prisoner Ombudsman’s office until a successor is finally appointed.

Its budget in the last financial year was £575,000, of which 90% was spent on salaries for the 11 staff.

“By March 2018, the team was at full strength with only the post of Prisoner Ombudsman remaining vacant,” Mr McGuigan said.

But in his report he also ex- pressed disappointment that the process for placing the Prisoner Ombudsman’s office on a statutory footing is on hold.

Although the Justice (No 2) Bill had received royal assent in May 2016, Mr McGuigan said the underpinning regulations weren’t completed before Stormont collapsed 18 months ago.

It means that bodies such as the Prison Service and health trusts do not have to accept the Ombudsman Office’s recommendations. But he said they accept most of them because they see the “importance of the work”.