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Article Excerpt
Introduction
OCCASIONALLY A DEATH IN CUSTODY OCCURS THAT IS EMBLEMATIC, REFLECTING and illustrating the complacency of processes and practices institutionalized over time. Such cases engage a media generally unsympathetic to prisoners and capture the empathy of a public usually demanding ever more punitive regimes. When Annie Kelly died in a strip cell in the punishment block of the Mourne House Women's Unit at Northern Ireland's high-security Maghaberry Prison, many people with whom she had contact during her short life expressed sorrow fused with frustration. (1) Typical responses were:
I had known Annie as a child. She was bright, lively, and headstrong. She didn't tolerate fools gladly, but she was always in conflict with authority. Mostly it was justified. There was a terrible inevitability about her death. She was on a downward spiral and there seemed to be no appropriate support that responded to her needs. Prison was the last place she should have been (Social Worker, interview, July 2005). When I heard of her death I wasn't surprised, but I was devastated. I felt her loss personally because I was close to her and saw this young, intelligent woman suffer from a lack of proper mental health care. She was always going to end up back in prison and that was the worst place for her. Once she was diagnosed as personality disordered, they treated her as if she was bad, as if she was a manipulator. She wasn't like that. Whatever the diagnoses, I know from working with her that she had serious mental health problems that were getting worse. They couldn't handle that in a prison. They just reacted hard on her and she came back at them just as heavy (Social Worker, interview, October 2005).
Annie Kelly, the tenth in a family of 12 children, first came into conflict with the law when she was 13. (2) Her family noted a significant change in her behavior following the tragic death of her brother. A year later, she received her first conviction. After being held in a Training School, she was sent to a Juvenile Justice Centre where, in July 1997, she was served with a "Certificate of Unruliness." She was imprisoned in the Mourne House Women's Unit. Considered to have behavior problems too difficult to manage in a juvenile facility, this 15-year-old child was fast-tracked to a high-security women's prison. (3) Holding her in an adult prison breached international standards, not least the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.
From 1997 until September 2002, she was committed to prison on 28 occasions. She presented the Prison Service, and those with whom she had daily contact, with a formidable challenge. Her convictions reflected a range of offenses, including police assault, riotous and disorderly behavior, criminal damage, theft, and common assault. A teacher who worked with her in prison recalls Annie's arrival in Mourne House: "Nobody knew how to handle her. What happened was dreadful. She responded to the more aggressive staff by hitting out. She was held most of the time in solitary confinement. When I taught her, our chairs were bolted to the ground" (Interview, March 2004). Yet the teacher and her colleagues never felt threatened by Annie.
Throughout her time in Mourne House, Annie was admitted to the male prison hospital on numerous occasions. Often agitated and disturbed, she said she heard voices. She also harmed herself by lacerating her arms, banging her head, inserting metal objects under her skin, and strangling herself with ligatures, losing consciousness. In and out of prison from 1997 to 2002, the records show numerous assaults on staff and cell wreckings, as well as 40 incidents of self-harm. Her formal psychiatric assessment found no "organic" impairment or mental illness. She was diagnosed as having attitudinal problems derived in a personality disorder. The diagnosis was offered as an explanation for her antagonistic behavior toward staff, her self-harm, and her "suicidal ideation." On release, she drank heavily. Yet her medical assessments record a bright and intelligent young woman suffering from low self-esteem and self-denigration.
The Death of Annie Kelly
In April 2001, Annie was committed to prison over a weekend. Uncooperative and aggressive on reception, she was immediately placed on Rule 35 and escorted to the punishment block where, according to official reports, she assaulted prison officers. It was decided that she should remain in isolation, unlocked only when three officers were present, and with a full-length shield forming a barrier between Annie and the officers. Following a self-harm attempt, she was strip-searched by officers. She resisted the search and a three-person control and restraint team, equipped in riot gear, was deployed. She was restrained, handcuffed, and medically examined. Officers alleged that, alone in the cell, she slipped the handcuffs and smashed the spy-hole glass.
Annie's continuing violence toward prison officers was the official justification for keeping her in segregation, unlocked only when three members of staff were present, protected by riot gear. In June 2002, she wrecked a punishment block cell equipped with an open toilet, sink, and bed. A report recorded that she pulled the ceramic hand basin from the wall, removed the taps, and used them as instruments to break through the cell wall. She was returned to the basic punishment regime in a "dry cell." Dressed in a "protective" gown, she was given a "non-destructible" blanket. There was no mattress, no bed, and no pillow. She slept on a raised concrete plinth. According to officers, she considered the strip cell "hers" and became aggressive if she thought another prisoner might be located there.
Without the means to cut herself, Annie regularly lay on the plinth and banged her head on the floor. She tore ligatures from the supposedly indestructible clothing and blankets. Most officers, who felt she was faking or feigning suicide to irritate them, did not take her self-strangulation seriously. (4) But a clinical psychologist expressed concern that Annie might cause herself an accidental suicide. All "key" staff were aware of this concern. Other prisoners also worried that Annie might die. One said:
I talked to Annie. She was a very young girl. She needed a lot of attention and some of the girls upstairs [young prisoners] need the same. But we can't do anything. We know somebody's talking about it [suicide] and we tell staff, but we don't know what they do with that. It's not really taken seriously ... some of them take it seriously but others will go, "She's always at it." That's not the attitude to have (Interview, March 2004).
Annie was transferred to the male prison hospital. She wrote a harrowing account of the transfer to her sister (Personal Letter, August 13, 2002). (5) It was to be her last letter home. "You wouldn't believe the way I'm treated. You would need to see it with your own two eyes." She described how the "control and restraint team landed over and told me I had to take off my clothes and put a suicide dress on." She refused. The all-male team told her they would hold her down and so she complied.
Then they all held me out in the corridor. I only had the suicide dress on and I was told I could keep my pants cause I'd a s.t. on. But when the men were holding me, they got a woman crew to pull my pants off. That shouldn't have happened. Then they covered me in celatape to keep the dress closed and handcuffed me and dragged me off to the male hospital.
The male hospital was a "dirty kip" and she "stuck it out for 6 days cause they threatened to put me in the male p.s.u. [punishment and segregation unit] if I smashed it." She "wrecked" the hospital cell and was returned to the Mourne House punishment block. "I'm just relieved to be back." Still in a "suicide dress," she had "hung myself a pile of times. I just rip the dress...
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