“Nobody’s Pretending That It’s Ideal”: Conflict, Women, and Imprisonment in Northern Ireland

• Author: Linda Moore
• Published date: 01 March 2011
• Date: 01 March 2011
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0032885510389563
• Subject Matter: Articles

The Prison Journal

91(1) 103 –125

© 2011 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/0032885510389563

http://tpj.sagepub.com

389563TPJ91110.1177/003288

5510389563MooreThe Prison Journal

© 2011 SAGE Publications

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1School of Criminology, Politics and Social Policy, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, UK

Corresponding Author:

Linda Moore, University of Ulster Jordanstown Campus School of Criminology, Politics, &

Social Policy, Shore Road, Newtownabbey, Co. Antrim, Ireland.

Email: l.moorel@ulster.ac.uk

“Nobody’s Pretending

That It’s Ideal”:

Conflict, Women,

and Imprisonment

in Northern Ireland

Linda Moore1

Abstract

Based on primary qualitative research with women prisoners in Northern

Ireland (conducted for the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission by

the author with Professor Phil Scraton1, Professor of Criminology, School

of Law, Queens University Belfast), this article documents the serious and

persistent breaches of international rights standards experienced by incar-

cerated women and the continued impact of the violent political conflict in

the North on women’s penal regimes. Feminist authors have commented on

the gendered nature of the state’s punishment of politically motivated women

in Armagh prison during the years of conflict and have also discussed the ways

in which women prisoners used their bodies as weapons of resistance. It is

argued here that the failure of the authorities to effectively tackle the histori-

cal and current breaches of women prisoners’ rights as part of the process of

transition to a more peaceful society has allowed the continuation of control

and punishment-oriented regimes for “ordinary” women prisoners. The arti-

cle explores the state’s failure to reform the women’s prison system in North-

ern Ireland in the face of successive critical reports from regional, national,

and international inspection and “watchdog” bodies that have recommended

the establishment of a new “rights-based” women’s prison unit alongside the

development of a gender-specific strategy and policies. The article concludes

by assessing the current opportunities for change.

Article

104 The Prison Journal 91(1)

Keywords

women, prison, Northern Ireland, transition

Context of Political Imprisonment and

Prisoner Resistance in Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland (or the “North”) is a society emerging from years of violent

political conflict, although sectarianism, political division, poverty, and vio-

lence persist. Over the course of the “Troubles,” more than 3,700 people

have been killed, more than 40,000 injured, and thousands made homeless,

bereaved, and traumatized (McGrattan, 2010). Most of the dead were killed

by Republican or loyalist paramilitary violence and 11% by state forces.

However, there have been continued allegations of collaboration between

the state and loyalist nonstate paramilitaries (Fitzduff & O’Hagan, 2009).

Fitzduff and O’Hagan conclude that in the context of the small population of

Northern Ireland, one and a half million, “it has been estimated that the num-

ber of people closely associated to those who were killed or injured is about

half the population.”

Penal regimes in the North were shaped by and impacted on the political

conflict. Kieran McEvoy (1998, p. 40) has commented on the North’s histori-

cally “unique” prison system with its high rates of imprisonment for “polit-

ically motivated” offences and where three quarters of prisoners were serving

sentences of more than 4 years and more than one fifth were serving indeter-

minate or life sentences. The state used a succession of strategies aimed at

containing, criminalizing, breaking, or managing politically motivated prison-

ers, all of which were collectively resisted by the prisoners themselves. The

resistance included a range of techniques: escape, refusal to cooperate with the

regime, “blanket,” “no wash,” and “dirt” protests, hunger strikes—leading in

1981 to the deaths of 10 men, electoral campaigns—including the election to

the U.K. parliament of Republican hunger-striking prisoner, Bobby Sands, and

violence, both inside and outside the prisons. Republican (antipartition) and

loyalist (pro-Union) prisoners resisted criminalization. However, Republican

prisoners were more consistent and strenuous in their opposition, loyalist pris-

oners being conflicted regarding the authority of the prison system.

The North’s prison system was shaped by societal division, the majority

of prison guards being from protestant, unionist community backgrounds.

Twenty nine prison officers were killed during the conflict, and many

more had their homes fire-bombed or had to flee following threats from