Reactive decisions by the State on the running of the legal system, such as the plan to provide increased prison spaces, do not help to reduce crime levels or change the perception of crime, according to a former judge of the Circuit and High Courts, Mr Cyril Kelly.
He was speaking at the Humbert Summer School in Castlebar at the weekend, his first public appearance since he left the bench last April following the Philip Sheedy case. With Irish society now peopled by a much more diverse community, Mr Kelly said, there was a need for "energetic and creative solutions which will take into consideration the rights and inclusiveness of the entirety of society".
He added that there were now strands in Irish society where people held different views as to what exactly constituted crime.
"We are constrained in every aspect of our lives by law, and crime is only one area in the legal system which impinges on the victim. Addressing legal change requires something much more subtle than dealing with this one area," he said.
"Society itself has a role to play in legal change. Sometimes society just shrugs its shoulders at different types of crime, for example, people watch others dump litter and say and do nothing about it.
"The fact is that all of us are responsible, and I would hope that legal change is made only for the good of society, and not just as a means of control, because with control may come contempt," he said.
Mr Kelly made his suggestions in support of a paper on The law, Social Change and Public Attitudes given by Mr John MacMenamin SC, a former chairman of the Bar Council, who said research evidence proved prison did not work for most young offenders as it almost certainly led on to long-term crime, and probably "more serious crime". Mr McMenamin also argued that Irish law could never be universally accepted until there was representation in the administration of law by all, including those from groups with the highest number of offenders.
As it stood, he said, people from lower socio-economic backgrounds could never expect to come before a court headed by a judge from their peer group.