Draconian crime policies, such as our excessive use of imprisonment, are misguided; they help to diminish people's sense of engagement in society, and create a more alienated and ruthless class of criminals, writes Paul O'Mahony.
The country has been going through one of its all too frequent episodes of widespread frustration at the perceived inadequacies of criminal procedure and outrage at the perceived leniency of certain sentences handed down for serious crimes. This may appear, then, to be a most inopportune moment to suggest that Irish criminal justice has a serious problem not because it is too easy on criminals, but because it tends to overuse the sanction of imprisonment.
However, in my view, the basis for a rational, just and effective penal policy is continually undermined by the skewed nature of these highly emotive, largely media-driven debates on crime policy, which inevitably focus on rare and particularly horrific cases. It is also undermined by the lack of attention paid in these debates to the broader facts of the Irish penal system.
For example, in 2004 only 29 people received a life sentence in the Republic and only 30 others received a sentence of 10 years or longer. They represent just over 1 per cent of the 5,064 people sentenced to imprisonment by Irish courts in 2004. In the same year, only 360 or just over 10 per cent of the daily average total of prisoners (3,400) were serving sentences of life or 10 years or longer.
In fact, the vast bulk of the work of the prison system involves petty criminals convicted of minor property crimes and other non-violent offences. While the consistency and proportionality of sentencing for serious crime are complex and critical issues that require attention, penal policy in general should primarily be shaped by consideration of how best to deal with the vast bulk of offenders.
In 2004, 2,000 committals were for sentences of less than three months and 4,200, or 83 per cent of all committals, were for sentences of less than one year. An astonishing 1,300 of those sentenced to prison were convicted of offences against the Road Traffic Acts. More than 1,000 of those serving very short sentences were imprisoned for failing to pay a fine for an offence that the judge did not consider worthy of imprisonment.
The homicide rate here, though it has worsened in the last decade, is still only three-quarters of the rate in England and Wales. For indictable crime in general the comparison is even more favourable. England and Wales had 11,300, but Ireland only 2,500 serious crimes per 100,000 head of population in 2004.
Ireland has an extraordinarily high use of imprisonment. While England and Wales detain 1,300 people in prison for every 100,000 reported serious crimes, Ireland detains 3,200, almost 2½ times as many. When the comparison is of numbers sent to prison on conviction, the differential is even more marked because of the more frequent Irish use of very short sentences and imprisonment for fine-defaulters.
A short sentence of a few days or weeks may have a powerful deterrent effect on some individuals, but it only serves to stigmatise, embitter and harden many others, who are drawn deeper into criminality by the experience.
Countries like Germany and Austria have recognised this and have strongly discouraged prison sentences of less than six months. These countries have turned to fines, community-based sanctions, suspended sentences, community service and restorative justice approaches to deal with minor offenders. These methods are as effective as prison at preventing future crime and have the great advantage of avoiding the many negative effects of imprisonment.
In the most recent debate, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, perhaps in a rather hasty moment, gave support to the right-wing view that "life should mean life". Minister for Justice Michael McDowell was more restrained and simply reiterated his policy that a life sentence should generally mean a minimum of 15 years behind bars. These calls to increase the severity of punishment are disproportionate in the context of the Irish crime problem and completely out of step with the trend in progressive countries of a similar size and level of development such as Norway, Finland and Denmark.
Scandinavian countries and others, such as Germany and Slovenia, have now established 15 years as the normal maximum sentence for all crime, including "ordinary" murder. The heavy reliance of Ireland on prison for minor crime also runs counter to the recommendations of international human rights bodies, especially the UN Tokyo Rules.
Populist, punitive interventions by our politicians are a symptom of the heavily politicised and reactive nature of our criminal justice policy, and the recent tendency for politicians to look for inspiration to the US rather than to more enlightened and culturally relevant European systems.
The impetus behind the Government's hardline response to crime appears to be an unwavering belief in the deterrent value of prison. Many members of the public, disgusted by gang-related violence and made fearful by sensationalist reporting, are receptive to this one-sided message. However, Irish and international evidence shows that prison without effective rehabilitation programmes is largely ineffective, apart from its temporary incapacitation effects, and is often counterproductive, creating more serious and violent offenders. But our politicians dismiss these facts and ignore the excessive and self-defeating use of imprisonment against petty, non-violent offenders, placing their faith instead in the discredited, harshly punitive US model.
Their response to the obvious failure of repressive policies is to call for even harsher punishment.
This is regrettable, not only because their faith in the deterrent value of punishment is misplaced, but also because there is a serious price to be paid by civic society for draconian criminal justice policies.
Harsh, authoritarian measures and the erosion of civil liberties that often accompany them change the social climate for the worse, corroding trust, promoting fear, diminishing people's sense of engagement in society and creating a more alienated and ruthless class of criminals.
In the US over two million citizens are behind bars, an imprisonment rate more than four times greater than the EU norm. The US is the only developed Western nation to retain the death penalty . The US is also the only developed Western country to make wide use of life sentences without the possibility of parole, a cruel and inhumane penalty, which the Taoiseach appears to favour.
In several US states, under "three strikes and out" laws a person can even be imprisoned for 20 or more years if convicted for a third minor crime. Yet this unequivocally severe approach fails to deter criminals and prevent crime and merely succeeds in creating an unusually dangerous society.
The homicide rate in the US is over 60 per million, which is more than five times the Irish rate of 12 per million. Penal policy is one area where our politicians should look to Berlin rather than Boston for inspiration.
Societies that maintain a moderate scale of severity of punishment and genuinely attempt to keep the use of prison to a minimum tend to be more civilised, safe and compassionate societies.
Paul O'Mahony is editor of Criminal Justice in Ireland (IPA, 2002).