Madam, - In the ongoing debate about crime and appropriate punishment, little is to be gained by Judge Paul Carney's personal remarks against criminologists (Opinion, December 21st) and Shadd Maruna's equally personal response (December 23rd). This type of commentary is alienating and runs parallel to the curious stand-off between the judiciary and Minister for Justice Michael McDowell. It gets no one anywhere, most of all the victims of crime.
On Judge Carney's core point - who goes to prison and who doesn't - the debate might be usefully directed at understanding some of the reasons for not putting people in prison. For me at least, these lead to the belief that only those who pose a real danger to society need to be imprisoned - and for a reasonably long time.
Approximately 1,000 people go to prison yearly as fine-defaulters, often for not paying their TV licences. As RTÉ's Prime Timeof December 21st revealed, most of these people, many of whom are single mothers, are damaged by their prison experience, and end up by falling further into the web of sinister and exploitative money-lenders. This inevitably leads to more chaos in their lives and perhaps even more serious crime. Fine-defaulters are not imprisoned in most other European countries.
The quality of essential services - particularly medical and paramedical - in the Irish prison system is very poor and has frequently been criticised by eminent bodies such as the Council of Europe. As a result, many people come out of prison in a far worse condition that they went in. For instance, one in five prisoners begins a lifetime's drug-taking when in prison. The mentally ill, the majority of whom have committed the most minor and non-violent crimes, go virtually untreated.
The inevitable outcome of all this is that more crime will be committed by new drug addicts and by people who are now even more disturbed than before they went into prison. How does this serve us as a society?
Everyone should be interested in making society safer. Why, then do we not openly admit that, despite the good work of many, rehabilitation simply doesn't exist within the Irish prison system? All who work in and around the prison system freely acknowledge this in private. As long as standards are well below the level required by basic human rights law, re-offending is inevitable. A few prisoners do rehabilitate themselves, but this is in spite of the system and not because of it. What exactly is the point in sending people to prison for minor crimes, only for them to become drawn into more serious crime?
Our prison system facilitates hardened criminals coercing people whose lives are perpetually in chaos (eg fine defaulters) and the largely untreated mentally ill. Only when the Government removes these two groups of people from incarceration can the real conversation about mandatory sentencing for hardened criminals have any real meaning.
- Yours, etc,
VALERIE BRESNIHAN, Woodbine Road, Booterstown, Co Dublin.
Madam, - Minister for Justice Michael McDowell is quite right to express his "strident" view that judges must act in accordance with the law and impose the maximum sentences in the majority of serious criminal cases.
The Minister also said that if judges needed tighter laws to allow them to impose maximum sentences, he would change the law to enable them to do so. Michael McDowell has consistently been tough on crime and he was right to question the role of the judiciary.
The recent intervention in the debate on prison sentencing by Mr Justice Adrian Hardiman is to be welcomed too. Mr Hardiman has defended the role of the courts in deciding sentences as the law currently stands. His insistence that it is the duty of the court to decide cases "impartially in accordance with the Constitution and the law and without regard to expressions of opinion" is quite correct.
It is clear now that the law needs to be strengthened to give judges no option but to impose higher sentences for offences such as gun crime and drug-dealing. What this recent debate has also highlighted is the need to allow judges an outlet to explain their decisions. In a modern vibrant State we cannot allow our courts to be run by an ancient system of deference and unaccountability. It is preposterous that judges must sit in silence as their rulings are debated.
I am sure judges would welcome an opportunity to defend their decisions. The Oireachtas should be given the power to compel members of the judiciary to appear before a special committee to explain their rulings in cases where the public need greater clarification. Whether the issue is sentencing or a point of law, judges could use this platform to inform the public as to the reasoning behind their decisions.
Rulings are not readily understandable to non-jurists. Democracy and public discourse in 21st- century Ireland could only benefit from allowing the judiciary be held accountable for its decisions.
- Yours, etc,
JOHN KENNY, Arundel, Monkstown Valley, Co Dublin.