Crime and Justice in the Republic of Ireland
| Author | Ian O’Donnell |
| DOI | 10.1177/1477370805048634 |
| Published date | 01 January 2005 |
| Date | 01 January 2005 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Crime and Justice in the Republic of
Ireland
Ian O’Donnell
University College Dublin, Republic of Ireland
ABSTRACT
Criminology remains underdeveloped in the Republic of Ireland and, although
some excellent pieces of scholarship have appeared down the years, an ade-
quate body of knowledge is still some way distant. Despite the limitations of the
available information, a number of trends can be discerned. The rate of recorded
crime reached a peak in the early 1980s and then fell for four years. This pattern
was repeated in the mid-1990s. In 1996 the debate about law and order
became hotly politicized. This marked the beginning of a steady increase in the
prison population. Despite surging costs, the criminal justice agencies have been
slow to embrace a culture of performance management and evaluation. Policy-
making is characterized by a mixture of inertia and sudden upheaval.
KEY WORDS
Community Sanctions / Crime Trends / Imprisonment / Ireland.
Introduction
Criminology could be described as Ireland’s absentee discipline.1A handful
of academics are active in the area, and for most of them it is a secondary
interest. The author occupies the only permanent university post in the
1The focus of this paper is the Republic of Ireland. Northern Ireland is a distinct jurisdiction
with a criminal justice system that has been profoundly shaped by a long history of political
conflict. Criminology in Northern Ireland has a strong profile, with a thriving Institute
of Criminology and Criminal Justice based at Queen’s University Belfast and a range of
undergraduate and postgraduate courses on offer at both Queen’s and the University of
Ulster.
Volume 2 (1): 99–131: 1477-3708
DOI: 101177/1477370805048634
Copyright © 2005 European Society of
Criminology and SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks CA, and New Delhi
www.sagepublications.com
COUNTRY SURVEY
country that is dedicated to the subject. There are massive data deficits and
official statistics appear years in arrears, if at all. To give but a few
examples: there are no worthwhile sentencing statistics; the most recent
probation data (as at July 2004) relate to 1999; no detailed prison statistics
appeared between 1995 and 2000 (inclusive); the office of the Director of
Public Prosecutions produced its first report in 1999, almost a quarter of a
century after it had been established; the first report of the parole board
(formerly the Sentence Review Group) related to 2002, although it had
been in existence since 1989; no information is available on arrests, the
characteristics of victims and offenders, the exercise of discretion or
recidivism. Victimization surveys are few and far between.
To complicate matters further, what information does exist cannot be
integrated across the various criminal justice agencies; it is impossible to
examine the flow of cases through the system. To cap it all, there is no
research unit in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and
there is little funding available for research. Unsurprisingly, given this
context, research findings are thin on the ground; there is limited under-
standing of methodological issues; and developed theorizing is scarce. In
combination, these difficulties mean that any conclusions are weighed
down with more than the usual number of caveats.
Rising violent crime, especially homicide, has become a focus of
media, political and public concern, especially since the shooting dead in
separate incidents of a journalist and a policeman in June 1996. However,
the contours of the problems posed by lethal violence are poorly under-
stood and their relationship to wider social forces has barely been explored.
Similarly, a major drop in the number of recorded crimes against property
in the latter half of the 1990s attracted little interest.
The lack of information is accompanied by striking complacency in
many areas. To give but a few examples:
•Prisons. The 1947 Prison Rules remain in force although they are largely
irrelevant and widely ignored. A Prisons Hygiene Policy Group was established in
September 1993 at the behest of the Minister for Justice. When its report was
finally published in 1997, it noted that in-cell sanitation was to be introduced in
all prisons by 1999 and recommended that this programme should be accelerated.
In July 2004 one in three of all prisoners continued to slop out. The prison service
became independent of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform in
1999, but the legislation required to give clarity and permanence to this arrange-
ment has not been prepared.
•An Garda S´ıoch ´ana (the police). Longstanding concerns about Garda inter-
rogation techniques – in particular, access to a lawyer during questioning and the
desirability of electronic recording of interviews – and the lack of an independent
body to investigate allegations of Garda wrongdoing have not been allayed (e.g.
100 European Journal of Criminology 2(1)
Committee to Recommend Certain Safeguards for Persons in Custody and for
Members of An Garda S´ıoch ´ana 1978).
•Criminal justice system. A series of important recommendations about improving
the quality of information on the operation of the criminal justice system has in
large part been ignored (National Economic and Social Council 1984).
•Legislation. A major national public consultation exercise took place in the spring
of 1998 in part to ‘help clarify the issues which will be addressed in a forthcoming
white paper on crime’ (National Crime Forum 1998: 9). By the summer of 2004
the white paper had still not appeared and there was no indication that its
publication was imminent, although it remained an objective in the Department of
Justice, Equality and Law Reform’s Strategy Statement 2003–2005.
The foregoing should not be interpreted to mean that there has been
no change. In a number of areas there have been dramatic developments.
Since the mid-1990s the prison system has been greatly expanded and two
specialist institutions have been constructed (a 44-bed unit for children
aged 14 and 15 years and a 40-bed secure unit for disruptive prisoners).
The Constitution has been amended to allow courts to deny bail to prevent
the commission of offences. Previously bail could be refused only if there
was a fear that the defendant would not appear for trial or would interfere
with witnesses. Mandatory minimum 10-year prison sentences have been
introduced for the possession of drugs worth h13,000 or more. There has
been a recruitment boom for prison officers and funding for the police has
reached an unprecedented high. A Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) has been
created to deny offenders the chance to benefit from the proceeds of their
crime. This is a hugely significant development because assets can be seized
without a prior conviction or proof of criminal activity, and the onus is on
the individual to establish the innocent provenance of their wealth.
These developments have always been expensive, sometimes mani-
festly unnecessary and occasionally retrograde. In virtually every case their
origins lay in the political reaction to a perceived crisis. They were never
informed by research findings and seldom tempered by rational debate.
What is common to all of these crises is that they were precipitated by an
assault on some aspect of the state apparatus. The same enthusiasm to act
is not seen in the areas of crime prevention, white-collar crime, political
corruption, fraud or pollution.
The new penal institution for children resulted from a commitment
made by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform when two
Garda´ı in a patrol car were killed in a collision with a vehicle that had been
stolen by teenage joyriders in April 2002. The prison secure unit was a
response to lobbying by the Prison Officers’ Association after a number of
its members were held hostage for several days in January 1997. The bail
amendment in 1996 addressed a perception that persistent offenders,
O’Donnell Crime and Justice in the Republic of Ireland 101
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