'They’d all love me dead …’: The Investigation, Inquest and Implications of the Death of Annie Kelly

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. …