It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.
NELSON MANDELA (19182013)
A perception exists of the Irish criminal justice system as an unbroken chain, where all the participants work together to ensure its strength and safety. That is risible. The fact is that the Irish criminal justice system is the perfect example of a hierarchy. Sitting atop are bewigged and black-gowned judges and their retinue of tipstaffs, snuff and brandy, and old-world etiquette. Each layer beneath them tries to replicate their status: barristers, solicitors, experts of all hues, including Garda and court clerks. At the bottom, vying for air, wrestle the accused and their keepers.
I was one of those keepers for thirty years and this is my story. It is intended neither to slant nor to skew. I tell it as the cards fell: I favour neither prisoner nor employer, workmate nor inmate.
This is the story of John F. Cuffe 02318C.
Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.
RICHARD LOVELACE (161858)
N o one grows up wanting to be a prison officer. As a kid I wanted to be a fireman, train driver, marine, sailor, submariner or cowboy. Indeed, my years in national school were lived out Moone Boy style: I pretended I was in the US cavalry. In first class I was a private, second class a corporal, third class a sergeant, fourth class a lieutenant, fifth a captain and sixth a general. Then reality and a grey boarding school knocked me for six as the real world intruded.
My exposure to prisons was non-existent. Coming from a west-of-Ireland seaside village, my habitat was lighthouses and fishing boats, sand, sea and rocks. That and emigration. Scenery and beautiful wilderness do not fill the belly or sate the soul. The bit I saw of prisons was via the American cowboy genre shown on RT television, jails with sheriffs, deputies and bad hombres. Occasionally, black-and-white Jimmy Cagney movies showed mean-street stubble and talk from the side of the mouth. All framed within steel bars and sombre wardens.
Even the lightweight Elvis film Jailhouse Rock depicted the warder as cold and uncaring as Elvis at his meanest uttered, Hey, Screw fill me a can of water, proffering his tin mug in the hot jail. I knew a score from my village who joined the lighthouse service, myself included. I knew nobody who joined the prison service. Around 1970 I saw an advertisement in the Irish Press looking for twelve prison warders for Mountjoy. I was neither interested nor motivated.
Note I have used the words prison officer, warder, warden, guard and screw to title the job. Prison staff are described by one or other of those titles in the media. Indeed, I have seen articles that used three of those names within the one story. The Evening Herald in March 1988 ran the headline Prison Wardens Threaten Strike, with the piece continuing, Prison Officers today decided blah-de-blah and ending Warders will, however, meet the minister The place of work is itself called everything from prison, jail, nick, slammer, can and gaol to place of detention.
As you travel on my journey you will see me use all those descriptions as the need and context arise. You wont see me use screw because I find it repulsive, and in my thirty years service very few prisoners referred to us directly using that title. However, those in the outside world who should have known better have. Its akin to describing a Garda as a pig. You wouldnt do it.
Around 1994 staff from Arbour Hill did a cycle around Ireland to raise funds for a charity. They sought some publicity and sponsorship. The Evening Herald duly obliged with a banner headline Arbour Hill Screws Cycle for Charity. I rang the editor; he seemed perplexed. Would you describe a guard as a pig? I asked. No, he replied, and then silence until finally the penny dropped oops. You see, people know very little about prisons.
Perceptions are formed often by hearsay or knowledge of a criminal, warder or film. Perceptions are confirmed by the media. A one-time lifer released from Arbour Hill after serving around eight years once surfaced on a number of radio shows. Describing himself as a former armed robber sexy title and Jesse James connotations cleverly he left out that he had, in fact, been locked up for murder, as they botched an armed robbery, killing the owner of the would-be robbed store. He then started going around the schools lecturing secondary kids. He regaled them with tales of how he ran the gauntlet in Arbour Hill. A younger brother of a colleague of mine arrived home and asked my workmate about the gauntlet that the Hill had. Perplexed, my colleague asked the younger brother more.
Apparently the guest armed robber told them that the officers in the Hill formed two lines, batons drawn, and the prisoners had to run through the lines as the blows rained down. I did see this once, in an American film where Apaches ran captured US cavalrymen in such a fashion. No officers carried batons in Arbour Hill; there was never a gauntlet. In the main, the inmates were just compliant sex offenders, many too old and unfit to take two stair steps at a time. What he didnt tell those kids was that he was involved in the murder of a hard-working storekeeper and that the man was killed in cold blood. Why ruin a good story?
My own kids came home from school in early 2007 with a more fanciful spin from another ex-prisoner doing the school circuit. This ex-prisoner filled them full of multi-channel American Super Max jail rubbish; my son gave me a knowing look, a grin along with a you kept that a secret for a long time, Dad kinda thing. I elicited from him a fairy tale of fairly damaging and libellous rubbish, full of fanciful imagery. Yes, youve guessed it: another Jesse James.
Where I live there are many prison staff who contribute greatly to the local institutions, be they sporting, housing or charitable committees. Their children attended the same school as mine. I rang the Vice Principal and pointed out the danger of allowing someone into a class like that where those being tarred have neither opportunity nor recourse to defend their good name. After I explained where I was coming from, the Vice Principal agreed with my point of view.
@cuffejohn