This encapsulates everything that is wrong with this 'society'.

Hotblack Desiato · 05-12-2014 1:40am #1

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/aran-island-parochial-house-robbed-by-dublin-based-drug-user-1.2024678

A heroin user from Dublin used his free travel pass to make his way to Inis Mór here he robbed the parochial house while the priest was saying Sunday Mass.

...

“He left the island post haste after the burglary and used his travel pass to get a discounted ticket on an Aer Arann flight. He has free travel on all buses and trains and he could be described as a travelling criminal,” Sgt Gaughan said.

“Isn’t it a great country altogether; he has free travel and the rest of us have to pay for it,” Judge Fahy observed.

Sgt Gaughan said Murray had 97 previous convictions, including 48 for burglaries. The first conviction dated back to 1984 and the most recent was committed on November 19th last, when he received a seven-month sentence in Dublin for another burglary.

Good honest people are paying for this person's lifestyle with their labour through their taxes, and through the 'liberation' of their property more directly.

Why should we tolerate this?

jank · 05-12-2014 3:49am

The free travel malarky for the old and unemployed is a joke. Get rid of it already.

Highflyer13 · 05-12-2014 4:19am

jank wrote: »

The free travel malarky for the old and unemployed is a joke. Get rid of it already.

Id agree with this. They should pay a discounted fare alright. Instead the rest of us have to pay fare increases every year. Also the amount of able bodied people I see weekly flashing free travel passes does not seem right.

kippy · 05-12-2014 5:42am

The bigger question is why do we let people away with reoffending? Give the guy as much help as possible to change his ways while locked up for first offence......if it happens again lock him up longer and throw rrsources at him to change....third time lock up and throw away the key.......

Turtwig · 05-12-2014 5:58am

Highflyer13 wrote: »

Id agree with this. They should pay a discounted fare alright. Instead the rest of us have to pay fare increases every year. Also the amount of able bodied people I see weekly flashing free travel passes does not seem right.

If a doctor can't tell if someone is able bodied just by looking at them, how can you?

Disabilities are often invisible.

The free travel is an excellent support for the really needy. The problem is the implementation of it. Being 66 or over is a needless reason to be eligible for one.

Prison service needs a massive cash injection, or else we seriously need to debate privatizing aspects of it.

Also can't overlook the elephant in the room: drugs. The individual was an addict.

NIMAN · 05-12-2014 6:41am

It might be the elephant in the room, but it can't be defeated, so we will continue to read these types of stories.

The 'War on Drugs' is lost. Its unwinnable.

Phoebas · 05-12-2014 8:41am

jank wrote: »

The free travel malarky for the old and unemployed is a joke. Get rid of it already.

The unemployed don't get a free travel pass. I'm not sure why this guy got one. Maybe he was on a disability allowance.

They should probably have restricted versions of the free travel pass to suit the purposes they are issued for, so if you want to help the elderly to get out and about, visit their family and friends and use their retirement to travel the country, fair enough - issue an unrestricted pass.
But if you want to enable someone with a specific 'disability' to get to and from their clinic, issue a point to point pass.

RichardAnd · 05-12-2014 8:43am

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/aran-island-parochial-house-robbed-by-dublin-based-drug-user-1.2024678

Good honest people are paying for this person's lifestyle with their labour through their taxes, and through the 'liberation' of their property more directly.

Why should we tolerate this?

Perhaps it is tolerated because there is no "we"?

Hotblack Desiato · 05-12-2014 8:59am

Phoebas wrote: »

But if you want to enable someone with a specific 'disability' to get to and from their clinic, issue a point to point pass.

Working people have to pay for their essential travel, I don't know why people in receipt of cash benefits (very generous compared to other EU countries) can't do the same.

In this case all the free travel pass is doing is subsdising his drug habit and extending the range of his thieving.

Free long-distance travel and subsidised air fares is a joke, a 50% fare should be charged on buses and trains and if he has a good reason to visit an island he can get the ferry and pay the full fare.

What really bugs me is the frequency of court reports with offenders with 100+ convictions. What is the point of a criminal justice system that permits this? If you didn't learn your lesson the first time your sentence should be doubled, same for each reoffence.

Peregrinus · 05-12-2014 10:01am

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

What really bugs me is the frequency of court reports with offenders with 100+ convictions. What is the point of a criminal justice system that permits this? If you didn't learn your lesson the first time your sentence should be doubled, same for each reoffence.

A moment's thought suggests that "the frequency of court reports with offenders with 100+ convictions" points to the ineffectiveness of criminal penalties as an instrument of reform. When the evidence suggests that a particular strategy doesn't work, implementing the strategy with greater vigour is hardly a rational response.

Hotblack Desiato · 05-12-2014 10:05am

On the contrary, some people just need to be kept off the streets tbh.

Peregrinus · 05-12-2014 10:17am

Lif in prison for petty theft? You don't think questions of justice and proportionality enter into this at all?

Plus, even if you think life in prison is warranted, does the cost-benefit question not cross your mind at all? If you're prepared to spend that amount of money to address the problem posed by just one petty thief, should you not at least consider whether there might be more cost-effective ways of spending that sum to address the same problem?

The Corinthian · 05-12-2014 11:02am

NIMAN wrote: »

The 'War on Drugs' is lost. Its unwinnable.

Here, in Switzerland, they figured it out a good few years ago. Zurich had become a haven for needle-parks and the Hauptbahnhof was practically a no-go area. Drug related crime was a serious problem.

Of course, the Swiss are a practical people. To the point of being amoral. So when the canton decided to hold a referendum on basically giving out free heroin / methadone to any addicts who wanted it, they voted in favour. The needle parks vanished. Crime plummeted. And the addicts were quietly shunted away into social housing, given an extra 100 chf a month if they had a pet to keep them busy, and the problem was largely solved. The federation finally followed suit a few years ago and copied Zurich.

I hate to admit it, but it's an approach that ultimately worked. Thing is that we've already seen how market forces work in Ireland; the Taliban banned the cultivation of poppies when in power. Along came the US-led invasion and the farmers were back in business. Heroin prices plummeted and addicts could afford to get their fix by begging alone. As a result crime in the period following the invasion of Afghanistan dropped throughout the West.

Up to us if we want to keep chasing a principled solution that we cannot have, or an unprincipled one that works. Having seen the results of the latter, I can testify that principle is overrated.

Hotblack Desiato · 05-12-2014 9:44pm

Peregrinus wrote: »

Lif in prison for petty theft?

Breaking into people's homes isn't petty theft, it causes a great deal of trauma to people, yet it's common to hear of burglars with 100+ convictions getting a slap of the wrist in court (and no doubt the number of convictions is a small fraction of the number of offences they've committed.)

Start treating this seriously and you provide a real discentive. At the moment, crime pays.

If you've decided to be a career criminal with no intention of reforming then why not receive increasingly lengthy sentences to protect the public?

Even repeat rapists often get lenient sentences in this country, there is a strong argument for keeping violent sex attackers locked up for life.

Torakx · 05-12-2014 11:24pm

Honestly just put them on an island somewhere and let them kill each othe if people want to act out their annoyance on social deviants, it is more merciful than imprisonment and obviously negative reinforcement has no real lasting or decernable effect on crime, especially when said crime is related to poverty or many other areas linked through poverty or lack of education etc, so no point just locking people up. That would be stupid and counter productive.

Whoever said to invest in more prisons and privatize them.. please.... Think about that..
Look at the states, do you really want us to become an island prison?
Why not make the whole island a prison complex now? Lets reach the endgame now, so the majority can see how well punishment works in a broken society.

superelliptic · 03-02-2015 1:23pm

jank wrote: »

The free travel malarky for the old and unemployed is a joke. Get rid of it already.

I disagree with this. You pay taxes for your whole working life and it is very useful to most retired / elderly people be able to get some sort of a perk out if it. Personally I cannot imagine a more beneficial perk than to be able to travel outside your area more frequently especially in your senior years when money is more likely to be an issue, particularly given the benefits to mental health and emotional wellbeing and the overall benefits that this has on society.

jobbridge4life · 03-02-2015 1:27pm

kippy wrote: »

The bigger question is why do we let people away with reoffending? Give the guy as much help as possible to change his ways while locked up for first offence......if it happens again lock him up longer and throw rrsources at him to change....third time lock up and throw away the key.......

You are pre-supposing that incarceration is a successful way of encouraging desistance. It isn't. In fact the opposite may be true. Imprisonment may be criminogenic.

In general I hate these Daily Mail-esque welfare scare mongering. Yes some people on welfare cheat and abuse the system. The huge majority do not.

kippy · 03-02-2015 2:23pm

jobbridge4life wrote: »

You are pre-supposing that incarceration is a successful way of encouraging desistance. It isn't. In fact the opposite may be true. Imprisonment may be criminogenic.

In general I hate these Daily Mail-esque welfare scare mongering. Yes some people on welfare cheat and abuse the system. The huge majority do not.

The guy gets two chances to sort himself out at cost to the state as well as the state providing an income for him. Why should he expect or get any additional free reogn after a third offence. I have no doubt the vast majority of welfare recepients and indeed everyone else is law abiding. My comment were in relation to convicted criminals who continue to re offend with serious crimes while getting supported by the state.

jobbridge4life · 03-02-2015 3:22pm

kippy wrote: »

The guy gets two chances to sort himself out at cost to the state as well as the state providing an income for him. Why should he expect or get any additional free reogn after a third offence. I have no doubt the vast majority of welfare recepients and indeed everyone else is law abiding. My comment were in relation to convicted criminals who continue to re offend with serious crimes while getting supported by the state.

I am not really arguing about this individual but rather your portrayal of prison as a solution to criminal activity or temptation. It isn't. Sending him to prison the first time may (thats a big may as I obviously don't know the details) have actually cemented his criminality.

kippy · 03-02-2015 8:47pm

jobbridge4life wrote: »

I am not really arguing about this individual but rather your portrayal of prison as a solution to criminal activity or temptation. It isn't. Sending him to prison the first time may (thats a big may as I obviously don't know the details) have actually cemented his criminality.

How many chances do you estimate this guy got before he went to prison the first time? Persistent serious criminals deserve jail time it keeps thouse of us that behave safer.

Peregrinus · 04-02-2015 1:27am

kippy wrote: »

How many chances do you estimate this guy got before he went to prison the first time? Persistent serious criminals deserve jail time it keeps thouse of us that behave safer.

But there's abundant evidence that it doesn't. OK, it keeps people safe from this particular criminal while he is in custody, but it's a massively expensive way of achieving a very limited objective, and in the long term it's probably counterproductive.

If your object was actually to protect the public from crime, you would not be spending the money by locking up criminals. You could achieve that objective much more effectively by spending the same money, or possibly less, in other ways.

Torakx · 04-02-2015 1:44am

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

On the contrary, some people just need to be kept off the streets tbh.

Completely agree. Look how much Irish water and its backers have taken and will take from this country. The bankers and thier puppet politicians. Big time criminals walking the streets. Taking peoples houses and destroying our country. They need to be taken off the streets asap.
But lets focus on the needy/uneducated and punish them for acting desperate during desperate times.
That is what is messed up about this society.
People turn on the poor and neglected while the real damage is being done by "respected" individuals and organisations.
What a backwards world this is.
It makes me wonder, is that drug addict as uneducated as the rest? Maybe he knows the deal...
Because the people propping up this system are more responsible for the issues we have than the people who are a symptom.

The Corinthian · 04-02-2015 10:09am

jobbridge4life wrote: »

I am not really arguing about this individual but rather your portrayal of prison as a solution to criminal activity or temptation. It isn't. Sending him to prison the first time may (thats a big may as I obviously don't know the details) have actually cemented his criminality.

So if custodial sentences don't work, how would you suggest society deals with those who are habitually anti-social? Harsh language?

Unfortunately I'd agree that custodial sentences are not the solution, but regrettably, faced with people who will act against the common good repeatedly, the only thing left is to take them out of society, at least for a while, so that they cannot continue causing harm. As such, putting them in prison is not ideal, but it still is much better than doing nothing.

Peregrinus · 04-02-2015 12:10pm

The Corinthian wrote: »

So if custodial sentences don't work, how would you suggest society deals with those who are habitually anti-social? Harsh language?

Unfortunately I'd agree that custodial sentences are not the solution, but regrettably, faced with people who will act against the common good repeatedly, the only thing left is to take them out of society, at least for a while, so that they cannot continue causing harm. As such, putting them in prison is not ideal, but it still is much better than doing nothing.

Falso dichotomy, surely? The alternative to prison is not "nothing"; it's using the funds which might have been spent imprisoning someone on more creative, and quite possibly more effective, ways of tackling the problem of crime, the consequences of crime and the fear of crime.

The Corinthian · 04-02-2015 12:18pm

Peregrinus wrote: »

Falso dichotomy, surely? The alternative to prison is not "nothing"; it's using the funds which might have been spent imprisoning someone on more creative, and quite possibly more effective, ways of tackling the problem of crime, the consequences of crime and the fear of crime.

I did not say the alternative to prison is "nothing" per say, I asked what this alternative to prison might be - ideally something a little less fuzzy than something "more creative, and quite possibly more effective, ways of tackling the problem of crime".

batman_oh · 04-02-2015 12:20pm

Peregrinus wrote: »

Falso dichotomy, surely? The alternative to prison is not "nothing"; it's using the funds which might have been spent imprisoning someone on more creative, and quite possibly more effective, ways of tackling the problem of crime, the consequences of crime and the fear of crime.

Somebody has 100 offences and is a career piece of garbage. Create me a way of dealing with it!

Peregrinus · 04-02-2015 12:49pm

The Corinthian wrote: »

I did not say the alternative to prison is "nothing" per say, I asked what this alternative to prison might be - ideally something a little less fuzzy than something "more creative, and quite possibly more effective, ways of tackling the problem of crime".

What do you want, an essay? There are a variety of alternatives to custodial sentences already available to the courts - the Probation Act, community service orders, restorative justice, etc - and plenty of research done comparing the efficacy of these as compared with custodial sentences. But if we are talking about the best use of public money to protect the public from crimes, we're not just talking about penal policy; we can also consider strategies which don't depend on waiting until a crime has been committed and then detecting and punishing the offender, but which seek to reduce the number of crimes committed in the first place. Those could be policing strategies, they could be social strategies, they could be educational strategies.

I come back to the point which I keep repeating and which nobody is challenging; prison is a massively expensive way of acheiving very little protection. If you haven't asked yourself why the crimes are being committed in the first place, you should expect that locking up one criminal simply created a gap which another criminal will fill.

The Corinthian · 04-02-2015 1:57pm

Peregrinus wrote: »

What do you want, an essay? There are a variety of alternatives to custodial sentences already available to the courts - the Probation Act, community service orders, restorative justice, etc - and plenty of research done comparing the efficacy of these as compared with custodial sentences.

Problem is that, unless those figures you speak of say otherwise, they're not terribly efficient in many cases either. If someone repeatedly gets summoned to court and simply does not turn up, what makes you think they're going to turn up to do community service? Or pay restoration or a fine?

But if we are talking about the best use of public money to protect the public from crimes, we're not just talking about penal policy; we can also consider strategies which don't depend on waiting until a crime has been committed and then detecting and punishing the offender, but which seek to reduce the number of crimes committed in the first place. Those could be policing strategies, they could be social strategies, they could be educational strategies.

And back we go to the use of fuzzy language.

I come back to the point which I keep repeating and which nobody is challenging; prison is a massively expensive way of achieving very little protection.

I completely agree, which is why I asked as to the better alternative. If better no alternative (and "could be policing strategies, they could be social strategies" is an vague aspiration, not an alternative) is available, then you're left with taking the best available one, which is that of imposing custodial sentences.

Don't get me wrong; I do believe that custodial sentences are an inefficient approach, but unless there is a viable alternative they remain the best of a bad lot, in many instances.

If you haven't asked yourself why the crimes are being committed in the first place, you should expect that locking up one criminal simply created a gap which another criminal will fill.

Problem is there is no single reason or group of reasons why crimes are committed in the first place. Correlations exist, but even if we address those the problem won't go away and we will still need a means to deal with those. Or are you suggesting that a solution is possible that will lead us to a golden age where no one will ever break the law? If so, I'm all ears

Torakx · 04-02-2015 3:15pm

Hmm such a solution might be called anarchy

I mean anarchism as a social model. I can't say governing model for that.

The root of our issues with crime is related to class separation and exploitation of the majority by a minority of families and corporations/allied groups, who have accumulated massive resources and continue to use a capatilist model to plunder and destroy societies around the planet. They are the ones whoneed to be dealt with, in order to aleviate the stress on society in general, and I would think this would indirectly cause a shift and coming together of people in general.

A very very small example of would be Irelands own tyrant, Denis O'Brien, owner of Irish water and our national media, gardai, politicians and other companies, taking advantage of a corrupted system, made corrupt to serve people like him.
The petty criminal is simply a symptom of the destruction these people lay down on the lower classes.
If you want to fix the problem lock away the real criminal. Those doing the most damage. Then when thats finished let the dust settle. I garuntee the petty criminals will be back to work(provided we have a democratic governing system, not the current oligarchy posing as democracy).

The Corinthian · 04-02-2015 3:48pm

Torakx wrote: »

The root of our issues with crime is related to class separation and exploitation of the majority by a minority of families and corporations/allied groups, who have accumulated massive resources and continue to use a capatilist model to plunder and destroy societies around the planet.

And God created the World in six days and on the seventh He rested...

Torakx · 04-02-2015 4:58pm

Faith is often the boast of a man who is too lazy to investigate.
Couldn't resist sorry!

This encapsulates everything that is wrong with this 'society'.

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