Sir, - I would like to commend Paul O'Mahony and Fintan O'Toole for their thought-provoking inputs into the vacuum that is the debate on crime in Ireland (August 26th). The excellent report of the National Crime Forum, published in 1998, is gathering dust somewhere. The Crime Council, to be established to inform future criminal justice policy? Never heard of it. The climate of zero tolerance and prison building remain persuasive to a fearful public left with no alternative by politicians who, come election time, will all jump on the punitive band wagon.
What then of Fintan O'Toole's suggestion that "the only way to deal with all of this (increase in violent crime) is to develop a kind of policing that substitutes in a civilised way for the old informal threat of retribution". The problem is, of course, that retribution is now formalised. The causal link between the punitive state and the violent society is still not accepted here. To paraphrase Shaw, a man is not reformed through injury. Add to that penal injury, the injustice of inequality and deprivation in times of plenty. The rich have tribunals, the poor have criminal trials.
Fintan is wrong however to suggest that it is "middle-class youngsters who tend to be beaten up". There is the hint of the moral panic about that statement. Local victimisation surveys conducted in Britain have shown that it is young working-class males who suffer most from violent assault, as well as those who spend more time in open spaces, the young unemployed, those too young to enter pubs, the homeless, drug users. A study conducted in Edinburgh in the early 1990s looked into the reasons why youngsters formed in gangs and found that the fear of assault by their peers was a major factor. There is a great more to be said and done about this subject. It is to be hoped that the media, so often a voice for the "hang them and flog them brigade" will ensure that voices of reason are heard. - Is mise,
Johnny Connolly, Mary Street, Dublin 1.