Prisoners, Media and Society

• Author: Judge Michael Reilly
• Position: Inspector of Prisons
• Pages: 57-65

IRISH JUDICIAL STUDIES JOURNAL

[2017] Irish Judicial Studies Journal Vol 1 57

PRISONERS, MEDIA AND SOCIETY

In Memoriam: Judge Michael Reilly, Inspector of Prisons

This is the unedited text of a speech given by Judge Michael Reilly (RIP) at an event at the School of Law,

University of Limerick on October 6, 2016 at an event to mark the launch of the R eport on Deaths in Custody

under the Advanced Lawyering Programme for LLB Students.

I would like to start by reading the following:-

The majority of the persons attending were of the lower classes from the dens of the city, from the

reeking alleys and homeless haunts. They came in all their repulsiveness and wretchedness for the

purpose of gratifying a morbid feeling of curiosity and being near the scene of the execution of a fellow

creature.

While you think about those lines, when they might have been written and what they might

refer to I would like to thank you Chairman for your kind words of introduction and to the

Law School here in the University of Limerick for inviting me to talk about a topic near to my

heart namely – Prisoners, Media and Society.

The topic this evening is a broad subject. I wish to explore one aspect and that is whether

certain headlines in the popular press are fair and the extent to which the popular press and

our views contribute, if they do, to penal policy in this country. I do not intend to seek to

explore the legal concepts of the rights to freedom of expression or the rights of people to

privacy. Rather, I wish, in the first place, to look at how an interpretation of the concept of

freedom of expression in certain organs of the press affects one small section of our society,

namely, our prisoners and by extension their families. In this context I will look at the

remedies, if any, that such people have if unfair, salacious or self serving headlines are printed

or if reports are inaccurate.

I will then go on to examine whether what is written in the redtop press regarding prisoners

and their conditions reflects our views and by extension influences penal policy in this country.

However, before I do this I should tell you a little of what I do.

In 2007 the Prisons Act was enacted. It provided, inter alia, for the appointment of an

Inspector of Prisons who would be independent in the performance of his or her functions. I

was the first such appointment.

On taking up this position I found that we had no standards against which to benchmark

prisons. In July 2009, I published Standards for the Inspection of Prisons in Ireland. These standards

were informed not only by our international obligations enshrined in the many treaties and

instruments that we as a country are party to, our Constitution, our laws and the jurisprudence

of our Courts but also by relevant decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, relevant

Reports of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or

Degrading Treatment or Punishment and non binding instruments emanating from the United

Nations and the Council of Europe. I also took account of the standards that apply in and the

jurisprudence of other jurisdictions I was mindful of the guidance from publications of such

reputable bodies as the United Nations and the Council of Europe.