'If we had jails full of people like the General we would never have a problem'

INTERVIEW: Having served as former chief officer in one of Ireland's toughest jails, Fyanstown man John Tobin tells the Meath Chronicle it's a far different prison system now to the one he joined over 30 years ago. 

 

'I wish I could tell you that Andy fought the good fight and the Sisters let him be. I wish I could tell you that but prison is no fairy-tale world,” Ellis Boy ’Red’ Redding (Morgan Freeman) in the Shawshank Redemption.

John Tobin can recall the day well, almost every detail. It was a few years before he retired from the prison service.

As he remembers it, it was around 2008 and he was in the yard at Mountjoy Jail when – what is described in his line of work as “a situation” developed.
The prisoners suddenly surrounded Tobin and a colleague. The inmates were angry – and threatening.

They had a list of grievances they were eager to express to Tobin and his colleague. Forcefully express.
“I never felt real danger in all my time in the prison service until that day. I felt that I was in for a bad beating at best, I felt in real danger,” he recalls.

Drawing on his vast experience as a prison officer Tobin managed to talk his way out of the situation. He had built up a certain reputation among the prisoners as someone who did what he said he would do.

“I think it was that more than anything that saved us. The prisoners knew that if I said something I would do it and I said I would put forward their grievances to a higher level – and I did.”

Tobin survived the scare. A few years later he retired from the service in his mid-fifties after almost 30 years.

Now, well into retirement he keeps busy by acting as a volunteer for a number of organisations – Tabor House, Special Olympics, the Childrens’ Hospital Crumlin, the Organisation of National Ex-Service Personnel, St Joseph’s Hospital, Trim.

For the most part Tobin - who is originally from Fyanstown between Kells and Slane - enjoyed his life in the service and came to know most of the biggest stars in the criminal firmament.

Among them was Martin Cahill aka The General who Tobin feels was not the most troublesome of inmates.

“All the General wanted to do was get back out on the street. The longer he was in jail the more money he was losing, that’s the way he looked at it.
“If we had a jails full of people like the General we would never have a problem,” he says.

The prison environment is, as John Tobin will tell anyone, can be a harsh, often violent place yet on the day he retired he experienced a touch of sentiment. Even today, five years later, it makes him emotional remembering it.

He had gone to say goodbye to a group of his colleagues in Mountjoy and was walking down the corridor on his way out. It was then he heard the call. “Mr Tobin, Mr Tobin, can I talk to you,” he heard.

It was a hardened, criminal John Tobin had known for years who was a member of The General’s gang.

The criminal, who was doing yet another stint behind bars, had a request to make. He wanted John to come back and meet some of the inmates.

“They lads want to say goodbye to you,” said the criminal and Tobin knew he was genuine. He didn’t go back but the request was touching nonetheless. It spoke of a certain camraderie; a certain respect.

Before embarking on a career in the prison service all those years ago John Tobin already had built up a considerable bank of experience.

He spent a number of years in the Irish Army where he served an apprenticeship as a fitter before he took up a job in Tara Mines attracted by the prospects of higher earnings.

Then fate intervened to take him down a totally unplanned route. A strike at Tara Mines left him on the picket line and reluctantly out of work. He was told by a friend about how they were looking for people in the prison service.

John sought to land place in the maintenance department but ended up securing the offer of a job as a prison officer. The young Meathman decided to give it a go. In summer of 1982 he started out on his new career.

His prospects looked good yet his was quickly stopped in his tracks when driving down the Naas dual carriageway one day in October of the same year; he fell asleep at the wheel of his car and crashed into a lorry.

He ended up breaking five bones in his face and seriously damaging his arm. He was fortunate to escape with his life.

He worked his way through the ranks eventually becoming chief officer, the highest ranking uniformed position. It’s not far away from the role of governor.

Over the years Tobin has sought to help many prisoners rebuild their lives. He has observed many changes in the prison system and even the type of prisoners who come through the front gate. “When I first joined you’d have to go looking for a murderer,” he asserts.

“Back then, you might have two or three murderers in the one prison and 10 in the entire system. Now you have four or five murderers in every landing and you could have 10 or 20 murderers in a prison.”

He says there are problems within the system and among them is a breakdown in the once military-style discipline that seemed to work so well. He says that now “prisoners run the prisons.”

He has heard all the accusations that about how places like Mountjoy and Wheatfield are luxurious holiday camps where inmates get five-star treatment.

John Tobin has no truck with such opinions. The denial of liberty, he insists, is a shocking thing for anyone to deal with. That is the real punishment.

He is fully in favour of prisoners having TV and their own sanitation facilities in their cells. It helps to make prisons more civilised - and easier to manage. The practice of prisioners ‘slopping out’ each morning was degrading. 

“Suicides, self-harm incidents, medical call outs dropped dramatically when TVs were introduced,” he asserts.

Drugs is the modern day problem. There is no system in the world, he adds, that will fully prevent people from smuggling drugs into prisons. For such an ideal to be realised prisoners must buy into the system.

He smiles in amazement at the ploys people will hatch up to get past a prison security system.

“People will bring in drugs up their back passage. They have used drones to drop drugs, they’ve used tomatoes. They fire the tomatoes at the security nets. The tomatoes smash open and the drugs fall out. It’s impossible to stop it completely.”

John Tobin has found himself dealing with a few riots in Mountjoy over the years with the uprising in 2008 right up there at the top of the list.

He was the chief officer on duty that day. “I went down to speak to the prisoners with another member of staff. Next thing they started to hurl stuff at me, pool balls, chairs, hammers, fire extinguishers. They had broken into the tool presses. All this stuff was coming at me and all I had on me was a shirt and trousers,” he recalls.

Eventually, after four or five hours, the situation was contained but there were many times during his career when Tobin, a big man, had to protest himself.

“I often had to go toe-to-toe with an inmate. I’m no softy as some of them will tell you.” The fists were only ever used as a very last resort, he insists.

Work in the prison system has proved attractive to a number of the Tobin clan. John’s wife Patricia worked as a nurse in the service. One of their three daughters, Natasha, is currently employed in the service as is their son-in-law John.

Like so many others John Tobin enjoyed watching the Shawshank Redemption. It’s one of the few films about prison life, he feels, that go close to reflecting the reality.

Few know more about life inside places like Mountjoy and Wheatfield than this Meathman.

He knows - as Ellis Boy ‘Red’ Redding knew - that a prison is no fairy-tale world.