Overview: Did zero tolerance or restricting bail really reduce crime? Legal Affairs Correspondent Carol Coulter assesses political responses to the crime problem
The early 1990s saw the emergence of a new type of crime - gangs, organised around the drugs trade, that were willing to resort to extreme violence in defence of their territory.
Gangland killings, hitherto virtually unknown, became common as rival gangs battled it out in the areas worst ravaged by crime. As the number of victims climbed into double figures the public remained curiously undisturbed, as if criminals "killing each other" did not count.
The murder of Veronica Guerin in June 1996 brought home the fact that the development of a culture where life is cheap and violence is routine contaminates the whole of society. Two weeks earlier Garda Jerry McCabe had been killed in an IRA attempted robbery of a post office van in Co Limerick.
Politicians competed with each other in urging harsh measures, and radio stations were inundated with outraged and fearful callers. The Government promised - briefly - to send all drug-related crimes to the Special Criminal Court. The gardaí said they knew who the criminals were, but lacked the powers to put them away, and this refrain was taken up by some in the media and the Oireachtas.
Plans to hold a referendum restricting the right to bail and to build more prison places were fast-tracked. A scheme for the confiscation of the assets of crime, the brainchild of the late Eamon Leahy SC, was drawn up before the murders. It was presented as a Private Members' Bill by the Fianna Fáil spokesman on justice, Mr John O'Donoghue, and was adopted by the then minister, Ms Nora Owen.
Other measures introduced by her included court reform, accompanied by the appointment of 15 extra judges, extra prison places, seven-day detention for suspected drug- traffickers and the regionalisation of Garda structures.
But they did little to quell public fear, and the subsequent election campaign was fought largely on crime, with John O'Donoghue promising a policy of "zero tolerance", an increase in Garda numbers, restrictions on access to bail, mandatory sentences for drug-pushing and additional prison places.
As Ian O'Donnell and Eoin O'Sullivan have pointed out in their book, Crime Control in Ireland, crime levels actually began to fall before this election, so the decrease which continued until 1999 cannot be attributed to a change in policy. What did change was the prison population, which swelled mainly due to those convicted of minor offences serving their full sentences, and by remand prisoners following the bail referendum.
This referendum took place in November 1996, months after the Guerin and McCabe murders, and was intended to widen the grounds on which bail could be refused. In the event there was a very low turn-out: 580,000 people voted Yes, 195,000 voted No, and 1.8 million people did not bother to vote. It took almost four years for the measure to come into force, during which time the crime rate fell steadily.
Meanwhile, "zero tolerance" was the flagship project of the new minister for justice. It was based on a New York anti-crime initiative which sought to act against even the most minor crimes, on the basis that this sent out a message that crime would not be tolerated. It was accompanied by a reorganisation of the New York Police Department, daily and weekly audits of crime levels in various parts of the city, and instant demotion for officers seen to be slacking. Three-quarters of the precinct commanders in New York were changed in less than two years.
The then Garda commissioner expressed reservations about applying "zero tolerance" to Irish conditions, but the minister persevered in the slogan, if not in the practice on the ground. The main upshot of the policy was an increase in the number of arrests for crimes such as prostitution, vagrancy and begging.
Mr O'Donoghue introduced an unprecedented amount of criminal justice legislation, including provisions for a mandatory 10-year sentence for possessing drugs worth more than £10,000, severe restrictions on the right to silence, and anti-money laundering measures. The mandatory sentence is rarely applied, as the judiciary has discovered that it is mainly drug couriers, rather than crime bosses, who are being caught.
In an unprecedented public consultation on crime, the minister established a National Forum on Crime in February 1998. This conducted six weeks of hearings in Dún Laoghaire and in major regional cities, seeking the views of those involved in every area of the criminal justice system, as well as victims of crime, local businesses and members of the public.
Its report ran to 160 pages, covering the causes of crime, policing, prison, the courts and a host of other areas. Its conclusions were at variance both with then government policy and with the consensus of the opposition that more laws, more police and more prison places were needed. The chapter on the prison service began: "Prison does not work."
It urged the avoidance, where possible, of detention of under-18s; the use of community sanctions and greatly increased funding for the probation and welfare service. In general, it advocated "complex solutions to complex problems".
One outcome of the National Forum on Crime was the setting up of the National Crime Council to "facilitate broadly-based and informed discussions on crime". Since its establishment it has published three reports, but public discussion of crime remains focused on what was being sought, and was largely delivered, in 1996.
"More police, more prisons, more courts are constantly advocated, and have constantly failed," said Mr Donncha O'Connell of NUI Galway. "There is no attempt to construct an alternative consensus."
Prof Dermot Walsh of the University of Limerick said: "There is not much more we can do. We have a harsher criminal justice regime than most other western European states. We have extensive use of arrest and detention, originally introduced for subversive crime, and severe inroads have been made into the right to silence. Plus we have no-jury courts, which don't exist in the UK.
"We also have draconian sentencing for drug offences, and if you can't get at Mr Big, the State can get an order freezing his assets. Then it becomes a matter for the person possessing those assets to prove they came by them lawfully. The State is using these provisions to get convictions."