Crime, justice and criminology in the Republic of Ireland
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14773708211070215 |
| Author | Claire Hamilton |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Country survey |
Crime, justice and criminology
in the Republic of Ireland
Claire Hamilton
Maynooth University, Ireland
Abstract
This country survey examines the core Irish criminal justice institutions; basic trends in crime and
punishment over the last 50 years; and critical junctures in the debate over law and order in recent
decades. Using an earlier country survey by O’Donnell (2005a) as a baseline, it charts the signi fi-
cant growth of the discipline of criminology within Ireland. The article argues that Irish criminal
justice retains a distinctively local flavour and highlights the promise of Irish criminology in
many key areas of contemporary interest.
Keywords
Crime, criminal justice, criminology, Ireland
Introduction
Writing in this journal in 2005, O’Donnell (2005a: 99) delivered a bleak (though accur-
ate) assessment of criminology as ‘Ireland’s absentee discipline’. Nearly two decades
later, the Republic of Ireland plays host to a range of undergraduate and postgraduate
criminology programmes, a state apparatus that actively engages with research, and a
thriving criminological community. The aim of this article is to chart the ‘rise and rise’
(Lynch et al., 2020: 1) of Irish criminology since the publication of the last country
survey in 2005 as well as the reform that has been visited upon many of its key criminal
justice institutions. The central argument is that, while in this important sense crimin-
ology and criminal justice in Ireland has come closer to the international norm, Irish crim-
inal justice retains a distinctively local flavour. To this end, the article first provides a brief
description of some of the core criminal justice institutions, with a particular emphasis on
recent policy reforms, before examining some basic trends in crime and punishment over
the last 50 years or so. Following a more detailed analysis of Irish penal policy, the final
Corresponding author:
Claire Hamilton, School of Law and Criminology, Maynooth University,New House, South Campus, Maynooth,
Co. Kildare, Ireland.
Email: claire.hamilton@mu.ie
Country survey
European Journal of Criminology
2023, Vol. 20(5) 1597–1620
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14773708211070215
journals.sagepub.com/home/euc
section draws on O’Donnell’s (2005a ) baseline assessment to map the recent growth of
Irish criminology and identify some key research themes that ‘re-imagine’the work of
criminology from an Irish perspective.
Background
The island of Ireland is home to two jurisdictionsdating from the 1920s when the country
was divided into the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
1
Given that Northern
Ireland is a separate jurisdiction, with different criminological traditions and influences
(Hamilton and Healy, 2016), this survey concerns itself solely with crime, criminal
justice and criminology as it has developed in the Republic. As will become apparent,
however, in a very real sense the thirty year conflict that unfolded in Northern Ireland
between 1969 and 1998 has strongly influenced the way in which criminal justice was
and is done in the Republic as well as in Northern Ireland (ibid).
In terms of political arrangements, Ireland has a bicameral parliamentary system with
166 members directly elected by the people to Dáil Éireann at least once every five years
and an upper house (Seanad Éireann) consisting of 60 senators who are not directly
elected. The head of state is the President who is elected by the people for a seven-year
term. The proportionately larger number of elected representatives compared, for
example, to the UK with 650 Members of Parliament (MPs) for a population of 67
million, has meant that politicians in Ireland are closer to their constituents than else-
where. Combined with the vagaries of an electoral system that places parliamentarians
(including Ministers) in competition with their party colleagues (as well as the oppos-
ition) this has been argued to encourage a clientelist form of politics and weaker bureau-
cracy that may have inhibited the ability of the system to deliver change (O’Donnell,
2011).
Criminal Justice Institutions
While Ireland derives its common law tradition from Britain it also shares features of the
American model, such as the provision in the Irish Constitution to strike laws down as
unconstitutional, with occasional dramatic repercussions for the criminal justice
system.
2
The Constitution provides the broad frame for the hierarchy of criminal
courts in Ireland including: District Courts in which minor cases (up to 12 months impris-
onment) are tried; Circuit Courts where more serious (indictable) cases are heard before a
judge and jury; and the Central Criminal Court which deals only with cases of murder,
rape, and aggravated sexual assault, and is presided over by a judge and jury. Unlike
in Britain there is no lay involvement in the administration of justice. A continued
source of controversy is the juryless Special Criminal Court which was temporarily estab-
lished in 1972 to deal with subversive crime connected to the conflict in Northern Ireland,
but has since been repurposed for the trial of organised crime offences and certain repub-
lican splinter groups (Coen, 2021). Judges in Ireland are appointed by the President on the
nomination of the government. The government is assisted in this task by a Judicial
Appointments Advisory Board (JAAB) which prepares a list of suitable candidates.
New legislation published by the government in 2020 aims at reforming this process,
1598 European Journal of Criminology 20(5)
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