CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Three weeks ago my sister s car was broken into. A fortnight later my parents shop in Galway was burgled. Last week a girl doing a media course with my ex-girlfriend had her handbag stolen at knifepoint just a minute s walk away from the college. And between writing that last sentence and beginning this one, I ve had a phonecall from a journalist friend at the Irish Times who s just returned from holiday to find his television gone. The last time he went away, they took his stereo (personally, I suspect his travel agent).
Alright, so these events aren t exactly going to make headline news but they re still indicative of a disturbing trend. Almost everybody I know has been a victim of crime at some point over the last couple of years. It wasn t always like this. So why is it now? The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind . . .
Certainly the times are ever changing. Many of us are currently enjoying the benefits of an economic boom, the likes of which we have never experienced before. The pace of social and economic change over the last couple of decades has been dramatic, rapidly transforming our nation from a backwards and powerless little island to a progressive and confident modern European state that would be virtually unrecognisable to our poorer, less empowered forefathers.
However, behind the facade of a successful, educated and progressive nation, lie some darker truths about Mother Ireland. While the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and, as the gap between the haves and the have-nots widens, our crime scene is taking a drastic turn for the worse. Things that were once only ever encountered in Hollywood movies and trashy novels are now an everyday fact of modern Irish life, as a glance at any tabloid or television news bulletin will testify. It s not just petty burglaries, muggings and vandalism though. They were always there, just never on the same scale. Nowadays, we also have organised crime, gangland killings and drug barons with vast empires and seemingly unlimited resources. Sex crimes, and crimes against women generally, also seem to be on the increase. And lest we forget it, recent high-profile sensations should serve to remind us that there s probably so much dirt on Irish white collars that very few would ever pass the Daz doorstep challenge.
Thankfully, there are some people willing and able to get behind the obvious crisis of increased lawlessness and violence and seek out the reasons for this downward spiral into criminality. Paul O Mahony is one such person. His credentials are impeccable. Formerly a university lecturer and research psychologist with the Department of Justice, he now writes and researches on Irish criminal justice issues and is widely recognised as one of the country s leading criminologists. He is the author of a number of influential reports on such controversial topics as prison suicides and the operation of the bail system, to name just two. Essentially, he s done his time in crime.
The Department of Justice is now talked of as a very secretive closed organisation but it s improved beyond recognition from what it was when I worked there, he told me just before this interview began. It was very difficult working in an environment where research as such was not respected unless it could be used in a PR exercise by the Department for political ends. Its value was seen in that kind of context. But there s been no tradition in the Irish criminal justice system of doing even the basic book-keeping type of research and using it equitably in planning and analysis of how we could improve things.
His most recent book, Criminal Chaos, offers a penetrating critical analysis of the roots of the current crime problem and of the multiple crises in the social and institutional responses to crime. Certainly it s a bracing antidote to the current simplistic, hard-line rhetoric favoured by so many politicians, and which focuses narrowly on the need to suppress the visible criminal while ignoring both white collar crime and the massive injustice of social inequity. His argument that a culture of non-accountability in public life is partly to blame for our failure to effectively tackle crime is one that should be taken seriously by all of those who are in a position to do something about it. It certainly won t be before time.

OLAF TYARANSEN: Is Ireland actually in criminal chaos ?
PAUL O MAHONY: I think the system is chaotic but we have to appreciate that as a country we re one of the least crime ridden and most peacable in the developed world. Our chaos of systems such as the prison system, such as the courts, such as our philosophy of civil liberties and human rights, such as the total confusion about drugs and social policies on drugs all those sorts of crises are very real. But it s all within a context of a country which is fairly peaceable, which has only one major city which has a serious drug and crime problem but, even within those terms, relative to cities like Manchester, London, Edinburgh and Glasgow our closest neighbours we re still fairly well off. And when you look at big American cities or certain European ones, the contrast is even greater. It has to be appreciated that it s not that bad here.
It s not that good either.
No, there are real problems in certain areas. As in other countries, it s often the weaker sectors of society that are the biggest victims of crime. Although it s the middle class moral majority who shout the loudest, I would hazard a guess that they are in fact better off in terms of victimization than those who live in the areas that produce most of our criminals.
Is media hysteria to blame for our self perception as a country experiencing a major crime wave?
The problem here is that we re a very wired-up society. We have three-and-a-half million people and an immense infrastructure of media which is very self reflecting. And we have a hot electronic gossip situation with the radio, many talk shows, television and the print media all feeding off each other. And they have the propensity to create panics and scandals and media feeding frenzies at the drop of a hat. It would seem to me that this country s not happy unless it s got some sort of scandal to contemplate. And crime is the number one issue in this respect. And there will always be crimes coming forward and there will always be that kind of focus. And this has led to a self perception which is unrealistic.
If you look at the murder situation for instance, it has got considerably worse over the last few years. Particularly murders of women and sex murders they have increased greatly. But you re still talking about a small number in absolute terms. But whenever there is some sort of coincidence of cases it gets magnified into an all-out catastrophe and is analysed as such across the board on television, on radio, in print, by politicians, by people talking in pubs and all the rest of it. But the reality is that our murder rate is still lower than that of England, considerably lower than Scotland and only one twentieth of American rates. We never appreciate that, it s never part of the analysis.
What s your reaction to the recent siege in Mountjoy Prison?
Well, I wasn t surprised by it. There have been plenty of events like that before and this one just happened to catch media attention. There have been a lot of events that have ended quickly before the media got hold of them and, unfortunately, when an event like that gets massive publicity, the event starts feeding off the publicity and it becomes part of the interplay. The Governor of Mountjoy complained very much about an article in the Irish Independent because he didn t feel he could allow the prisoners to see it and they were demanding to see it. Naturally, prisoners in that kind of situation are going to demand to see the effects of what they regard as their protest.
But there are lots of untoward events throughout the prison system and most of them don t escalate the way that that one did. And, by and large, even though the conditions in Mountjoy are so poor, it s a relatively happy prison. You know, there s a kind of working compromise between officers and prisoners and it s fairly decent and fairly humane.
It s still a ridiculously overcrowded Victorian dump though.
Yes, it is totally inappropriate by modern standards and really should be shut down. And that large sector of the public who think it s not nearly harsh or punitive enough and talk about prisoners luxuriating in prisons and having access to colour TV s and school and computers, have no appreciation whatsoever of how severe it is. In fact, as it happens, most of the people who go in there are immune to it. They ve been going in and out for years and perhaps they re not used to high material standards on the outside so that all sort of alleviates the experience for them. But when a middle class person is suddenly dropped into that environment, they re in shock.
Actually, I spent a few hours in Mountjoy before Christmas and didn t come across any obviously middle class people in there at all.
Well, to a certain extent, the severity of the prison is appreciated by the system which quickly moves middle class people out to more benevolent regimes like Shelton Abbey. Because Mountjoy is very definitely the worst place in the system and there are much better facilities available elsewhere. But, on the other hand, when you look at Wheatfield, which has a very modern design and has terrific facilities football fields, weights rooms, gymnasiums, cinema, school it s still a pretty horrific environment in terms of the lived experience. Drug abuse is pretty rife there, almost as much as in Mountjoy. So modern buildings, modern design and better facilities still aren t a total solution to all the problems of the prison system.
Should Irish prisons be privatised?
My first reaction would be that that s not on in a small state. You know, we should be able to manage them. I mean, it is a big issue because we do fail within our own system to maintain the human rights standard that we actually set ourselves and say we do aspire to. We have a philosophy on the one hand and we have certain laws and conventions that say that we maintain a very human rights orientated system, but when you look at the actual operation of things, like the visiting committee system, you see that they fall down and are flawed in many respects. Some sort of routinization has occurred which has led to a cosy relationship between the visiting committees and the prisons they visit and really, they re failing to impact as a watchdog for the public. You see things in this area being very much underemphasised and this is a serious flaw of our system. For example, the Whitaker Committee looked for an independent inspectorate of prisons more than ten years ago now and the government promised it three years ago, yet there s still no sign of it. And it s obviously needed.
What other steps need to be taken?
There are so many things happening within the system. There is an obvious need to increase accomodation but it s very very important that it s done to a proper standard. And I would be seriously worried that, in a rush to fulfill the demands for space and to satisfy the sort of repressive hardline public view on curbing crime and putting criminals away, that the government, in building this accomodation, forgets about the necessity for improved standards and doesn t regress. Now, something like the reopening of the Curragh Camp as a prison is definitely a retrogressive step. That is not the way to go. If it s necessary in the short term it should be very much built into the system and it should be commissioned for a very limited period only, because the facilities and the resources there are just not at all adequate. In other words we re creating new Mountjoys rather than new Wheatfields. A new Wheatfield is the minimum we should be trying to create.
How do you rate Nora Owen s performance as Minister for Justice?
I d be quite admiring of her ability and her energy. I think that the two women ministers have been amongst the best we ve had. They ve been the most willing to contemplate radical change and a large scale movement. I think what she s done is, she s confronted things more honestly, I think she has been more open about the problems and she has moved ahead. Now, not neccessarily in a thoughtful way . . .
Would you not agree that she s playing political ping-pong with people like Liz O Donnell and using our civil rights as the ball?
Well, I would certainly be against some of the moves she s made. The Bail Referendum I think was unnecessary and a mistake and won t be effective in any way except to add more confusion to the system. But more worrying still are the things that are being done without public attention the change in the laws regarding the right to silence, seven day detention for suspected drug barons. I think that these are very serious under the counter moves with serious down the line repercussions for civil liberties in this country. This obviously has been a Fine Gael law and order mentality stretching back forever, as it were, and so it s hardly surprising that she would take this approach. I think it s wrong.
But the sort of things she could be admired for are attempting to get to grips with the problems of early release and overcrowding and accomodation problems in a much more realistic way. That s not to concede that the right approach is simply to build more prisons and increase the number of places, but the early release system is such a shambles and is so damaging and so undermining of the whole system that you can t realistically hope to confront the underlying reality until you ve sorted out that problem. So she s made a meaningful step there. Other things like the Criminal Assets thing I would approve of. I think that s a step in the right direction. The setting up of an independent courts board and putting the management of the courts administration on a sound footing is also a good thing.
Do you think we have a good judicial system in Ireland generally?
The judiciary? That s a big question. Well, to a large extent I think the seperation of powers does work in this country and we can look to the Supreme Court the head of the judiciary, as it were for some very progressive developements which have occurred here. And by and large they have been ones that have respected and improved individual rights and human rights. They seem to have been by and large a force for tolerance and have improved tolerance within society.
But of course the judiciary are a very mixed bunch. There are some eccentrics and some well, perhaps I shouldn t use the word crazies (laughs) on the bench. And some are very thoughtful and concerned people, very erudite and all the rest of it. It s impossible really to generalise about them. I mean, what you can say is that as a system they are somewhat divorced from the realities of Irish life. Only a handful of them have ever visited prisons, as far as I know, and have an idea of what they re sentencing people to. They operate in a vacuum of information about even their own system.
Now that s not necessarily the judiciary s fault and maybe will be addressed with the new Courts Board. But it is part of our culture, this lack of information, lack of research, lack of reflection on that research and feeding it back in to how you operate your system. So the most important thing that judges do is sentencing and it would seem to me that sentencing is very ad hoc and, for example, in the sexual offending area has changed dramatically over the last decade as a reflection of popular opinion. It s questionable if that s the right approach. Certainly these sort of ad hoc changes shouldn t be happening without very good information.
What kind of information?
Very good information about who s being sentenced for what and to what, and what the effects of that are. It s a very serious loss which the judiciary perhaps do or do not themselves recognise that should form a very important tool for improving this core function of theirs.
What s your opinion of John O Donoghue?
He s articulate, intelligent and extremely right wing. He s extremely repressive in all of his views and always takes the hard line view in articulate and eloquent, but in my view, unreflective, simplistic and naive ways. But that s not unusual because our political rhetoric is almost always confined to the hard line concensus with a few sops made to the lefty, do-gooder classes who have a substantial number in this country. The sort of sops that recognise that deprivation is part of the problem etc etc but have no intention of doing anything about it.
How seriously has drug abuse contributed to the rising levels of crime in Ireland today?
Well, obviously drugs propel the economic need of the user. And the underworld, criminal black market nature of drug use in modern Ireland more and more deeply involves people in criminal activity. But the larger proportion, I would think, of the people in prison today who are drug users and who re committing a lot of crime and maybe are more vicious and reckless and desperate in the way they commit crime and in the kind of crimes they commit because of drugs, the vast majority of them would be candidates for prison even if you took drugs out of the equation. They would still be involved in crime and would most likely end up in prison even if drugs weren t part of it.
So I would say that if you had to pick one thing that s most predictive in terms of criminality, it is social deprivation. But then again, when you re talking like that, you re accepting the fact that our criminals are those who end up in prison. There s a whole other way of looking at crime which would suggest that there is far more crime out there and that crime is just as rampant among the advantaged and privileged middle class but it is crime that escapes attention and goes unpunished and unrecognised. The white collar area or the middle class crime area is a different type and that s why it s treated differently. But there have been estimates that, in terms of loss of value and actual financial cost, it far outpaces the value of normal property crimes which provide the offenders who fill our prisons. Some of that is crime like tax evasion not paying your residential property tax and that kind of thing but some of it is more concious and deliberate embezzlement, fraud, conning people financially.
Should these people be prosecuted?
Yes. There s a need for a greater recognition of the extent of white collar crime and the seriousness of it and the abuse of it. In many respects, it s more abusive. Very often it s not the ordinary struggling PAYE paying middle class person who s struggling to make ends meet who slips into this, but it s the people who re really making it good already who just can t resist the temptation to screw a bit more out of the system illegally and dishonestly. And a wider recognition of the extent of this and the seriousness of it would undermine the massive sort of moral complacency of the Irish middle class.
For example, with sex offenders you see very clearly a much greater spread of types of people. People with power, people with money, people with education, people from all sorts of different classes end up in prison because of their sex offending. And if all of the sex offenders who commit such offences were in prison then they would be the majority of the prison population because most cases aren t reported and there s a huge attrition rate between reporting and conviction. If all Irish sex offenders ended up being punished for their sex offences and were imprisoned then the character of our prison population would be transformed beyond recognition.
To what?
It would be a cross-section of the whole Irish population. And that would change everyone s perspective on crime, on offending, on punishment and on the prison system. And that s a kind of underlying reality that s not addressed very often because people accept that the way the system operates at the moment is the way it has to operate and is a true reflection of the wrongdoing in society. It s not. What it is is a reflection on a certain kind of wrongdoing.
And that wrongdoing is concentrated in what are known as the criminal classes, you know, the underclass mainly of Dublin and other larger urban areas. And it s very very strongly linked to their lack of opportunity, their lack of a stake in society and to the failure of our society as a social system to distribute income in a more equitable way and to distribute opportunities in a more equitable way. Our education system is a total failure. Education probably provides the greatest opportunity for redistribution of privilege and opportunity and power within society. And when you look particularly at third level which qualifies people for the better jobs and professions and ways of making money legitimately, the figures show that, despite free education, most university students are from the more privileged sectors of society. Next to nobody from the most deprived ghetto areas attends university. And this is a massive failing.
Surely the future looks very bleak then if it all lies in the hands of predominantly middle class and highly populist politicians?
Well there are positive signs and there are negative signs. The positive signs are in the way the media have become so much stronger lately so there now seem to be effective ways of prising open previously hidden corridors of power and getting at least a glimpse of what goes wrong and what is and isn t being done. You know, that there s a greater level of awareness and at least a greater demand for accountability. Whether structures are in place or not is another matter. I don t think they are by and large but that is a positive sign. Things are opening up more. There s more criticism, more scope allowing for criticism and there s more awareness of what s wrong. And that s a very important step.
But on the other hand there are very few signs that politicians are doing anything more than being led by populist arguments about the horror story of crime and the need to respond in a repressive way. There seems to be one unthinking agenda which goes criminals and people who offend are bad and should be stopped and put away and the stronger we are at doing this, the better. And that doesn t appreciate the other side of the story the conditions that engender these sort of people and make their presence in our society inevitable. And it also doesn t recognise the fact that blunt, crude, repressive measures don t work they exacerbate the situation and just add to the cycle of resentment, bitterness, inequality and division within society.
In terms of dealing with the immediate problem of rising crime levels and the urgent need to make the streets safer, do you think that the American Zero Tolerance approach should be used, as is being suggested by some Irish politicians at the moment?
In a way it makes sense. Psychologically and operationally it makes sense. You can understand it being successful in Manhattan, where crime can be displaced elsewhere. However, I wouldn t go hook, line and sinker for the kind of evaluations we hear from American policemen who operate the system and, you know, there s really no comparison between Manhattan and an Irish city. Instigating a zero tolerance approach over here is, I think, basically unthinkable because Irish people infringe the law in so many ways. They park in illegal zones, drive through red lights and commit numerous other public order offences, so any attempt to take that on in a realistic way is just too massive a task.
You re quite critical of the modern Gardai in your book, describing them as a totally demoralised force. Do you think the Irish police can be trusted generally?
Hmmm, that s another of those difficult questions. You know, can the prison officers be trusted as well? One thing that worries me about this country, it is like a large village. And because of that you have these calls on loyalty which are unrealistic and not meaningful in a modern society. So you get a situation like the hostage crisis in Mountjoy the other week and you get a response from prison officers over that which is like; Everybody has to get behind us now, we were in danger and this shows how awful prisons are. We demand that you stop talking about these people as victims, people with troubles who need help and, instead, recognise that we re the ones who need help dealing with these bastards! It s the same with the police.
The police have a tough job, they re up against it and every now and again something awful happens like the killing of Garda McCabe. And after the killing of Garda McCabe, you had a very similar response. You know; We are your guardians, we re all that stands between you and terrorists and criminals, you have to give us total and utter loyalty and support. Which basically means you can t criticise them. This is the impression I have of the police here, that they are so unwilling to accept criticism and to recognise that the problems they have are damaging to their development and to their progress.
Now, having said that, one would have to agree that they are fairly alright in their approach to people in general terms and in most cases. But there are bad apples. There have been very bad examples of abusive behaviour and there are perhaps areas of systematic abuse of the system and abusive ways of approaching people within the system. Yet because of this resistance to and reluctance to even listen to criticism, these things aren t addressed.
What kind of abusive behaviour are you talking about?
Well, for instance, after the killing of Garda McCabe, you had what, on appearances, looked like very serious problems of misbehaviour and misconduct by the Gardai. Two of the suspects were hospitalised, one three times! And as a result of that he turned up in court with memory loss. Now, on the one hand, while we re not willing to accept self criticism in this country, we re still very willing to criticise the British system in its dealings with Irish people the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four and so on. We even had a film called In The Name Of The Father which condemned the British system in no uncertain terms.
Over here, the case of Nicky Kelly is about the only one that s received any kind of popular acclaim if you like, any kind of popular recognition. But there have been many other cases which aren t talked about and which aren t really accepted as examples. Even the Kerry Babies case (where an entire family confessed to a crime they hadn t committed after sustained police interrogation O.T.), which is probably the most obvious one. We didn t seem to learn from that. The Tribunal wasn t very successful, it didn t go as far as it should have gone, but it did expose many serious problems with the use of interrogation by the Gardai.
Should all Garda interrogations be taped?
Absolutely! That s a sine qua non audio and visual taping. That was recommended back in 1990. It s ridiculous that it hasn t been put in place. In my view, retracted confessions should not be used as sufficient evidence against a person to condemn them for murder, for instance, which is the case in the law here. A retracted confession where there s no corroborative circumstanial evidence should not be enough to condemn a person, as happened in the Pringle case and in the Vincent O Connell case and in several other cases.
But it s more the culture of refusing to even tolerate criticism that is damaging to the Garda Siochana and their own sense of themselves and their own ability to improve. I think you have to look at that sort of core cultural problem to explain why a recommendation that was made in 1990 is still not in place. A very obvious common sense recommendation to videotape all interrogations. So there are all these areas. And there are other signs of it as well the mounting number of complaints about abuse of authority by Gardai, particularly in Dublin. The loss of faith in the Gardai in the marginalised areas and, particularly, one of the most important developments in recent years has been the community action against drugs movement in the city.
Unfortunately, these people seem to be screaming to give the Guards more power, thereby weakening their own civil liberties.
That s true. But the line of thought I was on was and this might be improving, I m not sure the distance and the coolness that exists between the Gardai and these people who ve decided that they want to clean up their own areas. After all, they re just doing things that they feel the Guards should have been doing for the last 15 years. And what s happened instead is that instead of actually confronting crime and the sort of abysmal downward spiralling of these ghetto areas, the Guards have sort of sat back, allowed it to get out of hand and then allowed that to increase their own emotional and attitudinal distance from these people because these places have more and more become no-go areas. And it s only the activities of the people themselves parents and more responsible people in these areas that have started winning back these areas from drug abuse.
I know that you re in favour of legalisation of drugs. Do you think it ll ever happen over here?
I think that probably in the long term, it s inevitable. It ll probably happen along the model of the Dutch approach, at least initially. The Dutch are in a bit of a cleft stick. For their own juristiction they re very forward looking and they take a tolerant approach and see legalisation as the right way. But whilst they have introduced it for cannabis and ecstasy, they still maintain harmony with international prohibition approaches on opiates. But they re in a difficult position because they re a lone country more or less taking this road. But I think that is the model we should all be moving towards.
Part of the problem at the moment is the refusal to differentiate between drugs and the way our laws and our political idealologues condemn all illegal drugs as being equally wrong and equally dangerous. And this is so obviously wrong that it s very damaging to all sorts of things. It s especially damaging to educating young people about drugs because it leads them to accuse the authorities of hypocrisy when they see people using alcohol, tobacco and tranquilizers so freely and under the cloak of legality. And when they see drugs like cannabis which doesn t have very obvious harmful effects being condemned as if it was as bad as opiates, then they tend to disregard all the information given.
In the final chapter of your book you talk about a culture of non-accountability in Irish public life. Do you think that this culture undermines the ability of politicians and others working in the criminal justice system to confront and deal with the crime situation?
Yes. This is a very important aspect of the whole thing. I ve used this as a kind of theme chapter to pull together some of the other things because it s an underlying problem in our public service, in the way we run our country and in our systems that people escape accountability. It s not just secrecy, it s not just this lack of transparency, it s its remoteness. It happens in all sorts of ways. I mentioned earlier about the refusal of agencies like the police to accept criticism despite however much evidence there is and however important an issue it is. That s part of it as well.
The civil service seems to be premised on a system of decision makers avoiding responsibility for their decisions and finding ways out of facing up to mistakes and therefore learning from those mistakes. They all seem to be faceless, nameless and blameless, as somebody described them recently. That s not to say that they themselves behave irresponsibly or take a relaxed attitude to their powers. They don t. Actually, a lot of the time they feel under intense pressure and feel as if they re being evaluated and judged. But when you look at it closely, you see that actual bad decision making or wrong decision making or wrong policies don t change. Nothing seems to change. The status quo is so dominant.
Why do you think that is?
Well, these people are being evaluated not on the quality of their decision making and it s real effects in the real world. Instead, their concerns are all wrapped up in promotion and what the Minister might think and what so and so might think of them. They are all under the cosh as it were, as if they were truly responsible for their decisions. But it s all about career things, it s all about their personal agendas. And really we need to transfer that kind of anxiety and meaningful engagement with the issue of accountability to the real effects of their decisions. So that when things go wrong and when things don t work, they can be changed and the whole system can learn from these lessons. But that doesn t happen.
And within the criminal justice system in particular, there s a huge resistance to experiment and improve. Anything new that s come in has been tried in Britain for many years usually, despite the fact that demographically and culturally we re so different from Britain. Basically we need customised, unique, tailor made responses to our problems. We should be inventing new systems alternatives to custody, new ways of approaching the problems we have.
We should be at the forefront in inventing new systems, like other small countries do. n
Criminal Chaos: Seven Crises In Irish Criminal Justice by Paul O Mahony is published by Round Hall Sweet & Maxwell (#12.95).