With the success of the film Hunger, more people are aware of Bobby Sands and the battle that the IRA waged during The Troubles.
The Provisional IRA was fighting to free Northern Ireland from British occupation, while the British considered the Provies a bunch of thugs and murderers, common criminals.
It took a hunger strike and several deaths to change things.
Members of the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA and the IRA that hasn't accepted the cease fire are housed in Ireland's Portlaoise Prison, and it turns out that they're being treated, by and large, as prisoners of war rather than common criminals.
According to the Prison Officers Association, incarcerated IRA volunteers march like soldiers, and it's permitted. Prison officers are expected to clear the landings when the troops come by.
Their visitors are not searched upon entering, and the men of the Real IRA are known to order in food. Prison grub just doesn't do it, and don't real soldiers get Red Cross packages?
It's nothing new, however. The treatment of IRA prisoners has been different than that of the common criminal since Bobby Sands and his colleagues starved to death in a British prison.
A government can't very well demand one form of treatment for POWs and not follow through on their end. The problem is, with the Provies in office in Stormont, everyone would like to think that the IRA has gone away, but it hasn't. There are still dissidents out there.
And if they serve time in an Irish prison, they're a prisoner of war, even if most people think that the war is long over.
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