Inside The Monkey House – John Cuffe

Certainly we felt we had been in a battle. Such was their mark over the nine months that almost twenty years later, the East Wing still brought back bad memories to the staff who endured that trauma. In place of the HIV/AIDS mob, Mountjoy didn’t pick forty sex offenders or return to us the sex offenders we earlier had transferred out. Instead they picked forty of the roughest and toughest jailbirds they could muster. Serious drug pushers, murderers who had killed on robberies and an assortment of up-and-coming thugs arrived in our small jail.

Most were settled on the North Wing, as we had earlier cleared out the East Wing and restocked it with our own compliant inmates. An assistant governor returned from a meeting at the Department and even though I was on the fringe of the conversation, I could tell he was spitting fire. Apparently in the discussions about the Antibodies’ transfers, Arbour Hill was deemed not to have performed to the Justice Department’s satisfaction. We had, as it were, let the side down. He had tried to explain the situation but found that no one wanted to listen.

A side had been let down all right – the staff of the Hill and the prisoners who had this awful affliction – and those who let them down weren’t the prison officers. John Donnellan, Galway three-in-a-row All-Ireland winning footballer and TD, once described a colleague of his thus: ‘If it was raining soup, he would be out gathering it up with a fork.’

Those words described for me perfectly those who ran Justice. How could any senior official, governor or administrator permit a jail to select some of the most inappropriate prisoners to be sent to another jail: not once, not twice, but now for a third time? Had they learned nothing from the burning of Spike and the destruction of Arbour Hill by the Antibodies? Obviously not: those newbies were heavies.

They had clout and weren’t shy about using it. Some were suspected of being part of the Prisoners’ Revenge Groups (PRG), a group of ex-prisoners who had burned down a prison officer’s house and who attacked another on his way home at the Strawberry Beds, battering him senseless with iron bars and pickaxe handles. As is the norm in those situations, both officers who were attacked were easy targets: two men who devoted their careers to doing the right thing for their prisoners. Fatigue had taken its toll on the staff.

The long, relentless hours dealing with the Antibodies had drained us emotionally and physically. Having got rid of the Antibodies and seen the return of what we assumed were ‘normal’ prisoners, psychologically the guard was possibly dropped. Staff assumed that the Hill would revert to its old status of generally compliant jailbirds.

This didn’t happen.

JOHN CUFFE served as a prison officer from 1978 to 2007. Originally from Blacksod Bay in the Mayo Gaeltacht, he now lives in County Meath. He holds postgraduate degrees in crime-related and social issues, and has lectured in Dublin City University. A regular guest in the media as an expert on the criminal psyche and penal system, he has written for The Irish Times and appeared on Morning Ireland, The Ray D’Arcy Show and The Right Hook, among others.

Stay up to date with the author at: @cuffejohn OceanofPDF.com To Seamus Carney, Padraig Loftus and Padraig Kavanagh: three teachers who gave me a love for language and history. They brightened many grey days. And to my wife, Kathleen, for her support and belief. OceanofPDF.com Contents Prologue Introduction 1.

Off to Dublin for the Blue 2. The Bog 3. Shanganagh Castle 4. Promotion Premonition 5. Spiked 6. Out of the Fire 7. Sledgehammer 8. Clear Water 9. Break on Through to the Other Side 10. Goodbye to the Hill 11. Tipping Point 12. Knocking on Heaven’s Door OceanofPDF.com Prologue 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 (1918–2013) 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 Gardaí 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. OceanofPDF.com Introduction Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. RICHARD LOVELACE (1618–58) No 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.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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