A decade after the McCabe and Guerin murders shocked the nation, it is time to look again at how we tackle crime, writes Ian O'Donnell
Ten years ago this month Det Garda Jerry McCabe and journalist Veronica Guerin were shot dead. These killings convulsed the country and caused concern about crime to reach an unprecedented level.
The Dáil was recalled during its summer recess for a special debate. It was almost as if a state of national emergency had been declared. In the following year's general election, law and order became hotly contested issues. The talk was of more police, more prisons and zero tolerance.
The special debate was characterised by unusual degree of cross-party consensus and a determination to demonstrate leadership and a sense of common purpose.
The main business of the day concerned an action plan designed to part criminals from the proceeds of their crimes and to improve the efficiency of the justice system.Six Bills completed, or were brought to the final stages of, their legislative journeys that day. These were the Criminal Assets Bureau Bill, the Proceeds of Crime Bill, the Criminal Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, the Criminal Justice (Drug Trafficking) Bill, the Courts Bill and the Disclosure of Certain Information for Taxation and Other Purposes Bill.
Other initiatives were promised, or called for, including restrictions on the right to bail, reform of the youth justice system and harsher sentences for drug dealers.
Taoiseach John Bruton undertook to put more gardaí on the streets, more judges on the bench, more criminals behind bars and more ill-gotten gains beyond the reach of those who hoped to benefit from them. He acknowledged that his proposals would be expensive, especially when it came to Garda recruitment and prison building, but assured the public that this was money that would have to be spent. The time had come to dig deep in the fight against crime.
The then minister for justice, Nora Owen, stated that "the real quality and value of what we are doing today and what has been done will be judged in 10 or 20 years' time by its residual and long-term benefits for today's children and tomorrow's society". What can we say at this remove about the legacy of the turbulent summer of 1996?
The first point is that despite the change of government in 1997, all of the commitments made then have been honoured. The criminal justice system has benefited from a series of massive injections of cash. The levels of funding that have become available would have been unimaginable a decade ago.
This spending has been relentless and largely unconditional, with surprisingly little emphasis on efficiency gains. For example, it has become the received wisdom that more police are needed, especially on the "mean streets" in urban areas.
Against this background the annual Garda budget has swollen to €1.25 billion. Police powers have been enhanced. Their equipment is better. Huge numbers of overtime hours are worked. But consider the following. Crime has fallen in the major cities. Criminal proceedings are taken in fewer cases today than a decade ago. The detection rate is dropping. What has been achieved by the doubling in resources since 1996? Do we feel twice as safe? How can further expansion be justified?
One of the key trends of the last decade is for policy formulation and implementation to race ahead of the evidence base. This means that decisions are taken blind to their consequences and not discarded when close examination suggests they have failed to have the desired effects. A good example of this tendency is the continued faith in the deterrent power of sentencing.
We know from studies of criminal decision making that a high probability of arrest exercises a more powerful influence than a remote chance of punishment, however harsh. Neither this fact, nor their unpopularity with judges, has dissuaded the legislature from introducing mandatory minimum sentences. The 10-year term for drug crime is in place and plans for five and 10-year terms for gun crime are well advanced.
While the knowledge deficit remains large it would be wrong not to acknowledge at least two positive developments in this area. These are the emergence of criminology as an academic discipline and the decision by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform to create an annual budget for research.
But politicians are still hesitant to draw upon the findings of criminological research to inform their decision-making. When money is plentiful the need for reflection and expertise seems to be less pressing.
One of the negative consequences of the spending spree over the past 10 years has been the accentuation of pre-existing distortions, especially the emphasis on prison as a central plank of any crime-control strategy. The imbalance between prison and probation has become ingrained. An important lesson that can be learned from other countries is that the only guarantees accompanying such a situation are a massive and steady drain on the public purse, a marginal reduction in crime and a confirmation of public anxieties.
Regrettably, this lesson has yet to be taken on board. The longer prison is allowed to remain the fulcrum of the criminal justice system, the poorer are the prospects for meeting the needs of victims, offenders and the public.
The seam of policies opened up in 1996 has been exhausted. What is required is a dispassionate analysis of how public money can best be spent on public safety. This will require challenging the continuing relevance of an approach that defines the solution in terms of more policing, prosecuting and punishing.
• Dr Ian O'Donnell is director of the UCD Institute of Criminology.