Maze prison to be reopened?

[faceless]

Secret plan to use Maze site as prison

Jamie Doward and Henry McDonald
Sunday November 5, 2006
The Observer

The government is considering a secret plan to turn part of the Maze prison in Northern Ireland into a jail for foreign prisoners, The Observer can reveal. The move has astonished prison experts who have described it as a desperate act to contain the overcrowding crisis in Britain's jails.

Nationalist and unionist politicians united last night in their opposition to the plan, which neither the Northern Ireland Prison Service nor the Office of the First and Deputy First Minister at Stormont have been made aware of.

The Maze - scene of the hunger strikes of the Eighties - was closed in 2000, although most of the prisoners were released in 1999 under the Good Friday Agreement.

Demolition work on the 360-acre site started last week, but eight H-blocks and a hospital remain and there is a large amount of vacant land that could accommodate a new prison.

Any move to use the site, part of which is being converted into a giant sports stadium, for incarceration purposes would be controversial and therefore is likely to be introduced only as a last resort by the government. Sinn Fein wants some of the site to be turned into a memorial for the hunger striker Bobby Sands who died in the Maze hospital. The government has confirmed only that part of it will be turned into a 'centre for conflict transformation'. A hut which housed loyalist prisoners is also being preserved as part of plans for a museum.

However, with the prison population in Britain close to 80,000 the government has been forced to consider radical plans for urgent expansion. Internal Home Office estimates - made in July - suggested the prison population would now stand at around 79,000, almost 1,000 below the actual current figure. Experts predict the population could touch 90,000 within a couple of years, placing far greater strains on the existing system if there is no expansion.

In a bid to ease the crisis the government has activated Operation Safeguard, an emergency measure to house prisoners in police cells. It is also looking to lease ships to be used for floating prisons. Earlier this year it sold the prison ship HMP Weare to an oil exploration firm based in Nigeria.

It is believed the firm has offered to lease the ship back to the government for ?10m a year - four times what it is believed to have paid for it.

The government is also looking to convert an old army barracks in Dover into a prison. In a sign of its desperation the government has told prison construction companies it will award contracts to any firm that can build a prison by the end of next year. It has also urged prison governors to come up with 'blue sky' thinking to help cope with crisis.

One solution, proposed by the Prison Governors Association, is to use the Maze for housing foreign national prisoners who have completed their sentences and are awaiting deportation.

It is thought that holding foreign prisoners in Northern Ireland would be less controversial than holding British prisoners because they would be less likely to have family in Britain who would want to visit them. The proposal is being studied by prisons minister Gerry Sutcliffe, although civil servants have raised doubts about its feasibility.

A Home Office spokeswoman confirmed the plan to use the Maze was being considered but could only proceed with parliamentary approval. 'Removing prisoners to Northern Ireland would require primary legislation and it is therefore not a short-term solution, so we are prioritising other things,' the spokeswoman said, emphasising the government's preferred option would be to exhaust the use of measures such as prison ships first.

'The crisis is of the Home Office's own making,' said Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of Napo, the Probation Union. 'The government didn't build, rejected less punitive sentencing and ruled out the emergency release of prisoners near the end of their term. To consider using the Maze is the act of a desperate administration.'

The MP for the area that includes the Maze has vowed to oppose any move to re-open the prison. 'There is demolition work going on at the Maze at present,' said Jeffrey Donaldson, the Democratic Unionist MP for Lagan Valley. 'People want to draw a line under the Troubles and this demolition is part of that. It should not be sacrificed because of a prison places crisis in England.'

The Northern Ireland Office confirmed that neither the prison service or the Stormont department in charge of taking over the Maze estate had any idea there were plans to re-open the prison.

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They should be looking at sending less people to jail in the first place - that would solve the overcrowding problem... but of course, that wouldn't please the right-wing who seem to think that people in jail is a good thing even though it costs them so much.

[IRiSHMaFIA]

Big mistake as far as I'm concerned. The land Long Kesh resides on should be used as a massive memorial garden for the irish republican prisoners that sacrificed their lives for freedom, and for the innocent people that lost their lives during the troubles.

[fritz]

I'm with you on this one Irish

[pirtybirdy]

I'm for keeping criminals in prison and making them pay for their crimes and for Irish's idea for making the land a memorial to Irish Republicans. Let's build a prison where Buckingham Palace resides....

[IRiSHMaFIA]