A man pleads guilty to sexually assaulting a woman at a house party and the charges are struck out after he offers to pay €1,500 to the court poor box.
A hunter hands over €2,500 as “an atonement to society” for shooting a red deer stag – a protected species – in Co Kerry.
A woman gets drunk and refuses to pay a taxi fare; her punishment is a €100 donation to charity.
The modern Irish legal system is replete with peculiar anachronisms and conventions that emerged as much by accident as by design. One idiosyncrasy is the court poor box, a practice of disputed origin, uneven use and contested effect.
For some, the examples above – all of which refer to cases heard in district courts in recent years – are reminders of what's wrong with a system that allows offenders escape without a conviction simply because they are willing to – and have the ability to – pay a nominal sum.
Discretion
For others, the practice gives judges much-needed discretion in tailoring a sanction to the specific circumstances of a case.
If a drunken student with no criminal record and an impeccable history shouts abuse at a garda, for example, is it not preferable to seek a donation to charity rather than jeopardise his chances of ever getting a J1 visa to work in the US?
The poor box tradition, which predates Independence, is predominantly used by the district courts, which typically deal with criminal offences at the lower end of the scale. It usually arises as an option where the offence is minor and would not attract a custodial sentence; most commonly, in cases of public order offences such as breach of the peace, disorderly conduct in a public place or abusive and insulting behaviour in a public space. Sometimes it is used for road traffic offences – a practice criticised recently by Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar, who expressed frustration that drivers were escaping penalty points as a result.
Occasionally it’s used for minor drug offences and offences against property or animals. Like much of what goes on in the District Court, we have very little serious research on why and how judges use the poor box.
A Courts Service spokesman says it may be used, for example, where the accused has never been before the courts and has pleaded guilty, or where a conviction might damage his chances of getting a job or working abroad.
“When combined with the Probation of Offenders Act, it provides an option where some financial penalty is considered merited but a conviction and fine are not,” the spokesman says.
"It can sometimes be a more meaningful punishment than the maximum fine, where the value of a maximum fine may have been eroded by inflation."
Kerry judges
Some judges use the practice routinely; others hardly at all. As the figures published today show, judges in Co Kerry seem to be awfully fond of the poor box; for the past two years, offenders in that county have coughed up a quarter of all the charitable donations collected in the State's courtrooms.
Where the money ends up is also dependent on the presiding judge; in 2012, €2 million was shared between 700 organisations, from Concern to Athlone Sub-Aqua Club.
In 2005, having examined how the poor box operated, the Law Reform Commission recommended that it be reformed to get rid of the perception that wealthy defendants could buy their way out of a conviction.
“The commission did not accept that people of means can actually buy their way out of a conviction but it concluded that the perception that the disposition was used in such a way was problematic,” it said in its report.
The commission recommended that the poor box be put on a statutory footing. Under its proposed new law, the money would go into a specific fund which would be operated not by a judge but by an advisory committee tasked with deciding how the money should be distributed.
