Should Irish prisoners be given hamsters to help calm them down?

Over in Britain, HMP Northumberland is home to a hamster called Robinson, whose presence has been credited with improving the behaviour of inmates. 

The prison also has a flock of chickens, which are looked after by inmates. 

The Independent Monitoring Board noted in a report that the animals “enable prisoners to demonstrate their capacity for care”. 

“One beneficiary, Robinson the hamster, seems to be thriving as a result,” it added. 

On The Claire Byrne Show, clinical psychologist Anne Keogh said animals are known to improve people’s behaviour. 

“We do know that animals, cute animals, can help regulation,” she said. 

“I suppose it doesn't necessarily change a person's state or anything, but the nervous system does calm down in the presence of something very cute and having something else to attend to. 

“We use them in schools and hospitals and all sorts of places, to be honest, for that calming feature that they bring.”

Dr Keogh continued that animals trigger similar emotions in people to small children. 

“We have what's called a baby schema, which is where we're drawn into babies, if you like, and creatures that look like babies with maybe cute faces or small little proportions,” she said. 

“So, they naturally take our attention - we're drawn to them.

“Also, it activates for us a caregiving system; we want to take care of small, cute things, in truth. 

“That takes our attention away from whatever else you might have been thinking about.”

Dr Keogh warned that bringing animals into a prison are “not going to solve all our problems”, but predicted that they might help in the short-term.

“But it does interrupt the kind of stress and in the contrast of those environments,” she said. 

“So, we can't say that the effects last very, very long, but we can say that at that moment in time that it's extremely regulating.”

Main image: A hamster. Picture by: Alamy.com.