Irish Prisons

detective wrote: »

We badly need extra spaces in this country. We don't need to replace old cells for new ones. We need to supplement the old cells and add to them.

Indeed, and I would go further.

The gardai don't need more numbers, they need better equiment and more training to put more gardai into specialised units. The streets would be a lot safer if they made more dectectives for serious crimes, special branch, the national crime bureau yoke etc. But this costs money and people demand more gardai walking the streets visibly and more traffic control (both fine in themselves, but an underuse of garda time if you ask me). Then people complain about the gardai not doing enough as regards the gangs but sure how are they supposed to break organised criminal gangs if they spend most of their time walking around to make joe public feel safe? Are they supposed to do it in their spare time?

The DPP is a great area for government cuts (sure who cares if the lawyers get paid or not) but this has meant that the DPP has been prosecuting less serious crimes or dealing with them in the district court instead.

I don't know how people realistically expect convictions to arise from the financial chicanery of the last few years if we are not spending the money on it.

We also need more judges, it taking a year or more to get on for trial in many circuits, and the district court is more packed than ever.

AFAIK, Ireland has one of the highest per capita rates of imprisonment, but we are only average as regards rates of crime (serious crime at any rate). However, people don't seem to realise this.

Equally, a big song and dance is made about the money paid in legal aid, yet in yesterday's Irish times it stated that legal aid in NI is twice what it is in the south, and even accounting for ex paramilitaries, I doubt they have as much crime as here.

All things considered, we have increased our spend on criminal justice by a relatively small amount compared to other eu countries - http://books.google.ie/books?id=D9gghA1h3ooC&pg=PA42&lpg=PA42&dq=northern+ireland+prosecutions+per+capita&source=bl&ots=sIGVoElTlq&sig=QJBpjN2xkt72htFJ8oQWR6Bq0W0&hl=en&ei=yWyfTPjfK4GRjAemi_CpDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false
and we still manage to have a fairly high level of prosecution and imprisonment (except in certain areas such as white collar crime, corruption etc).

As regards prisons, one issue of concern is that the cost of imprisonment is relatively high compared to other EU countries. This is perhaps due to the lower amount of low maintenance open or low security prisons and a disproportionate level of maximum security prisons. It may also be due to public sector wages being higher, but that's an issue for another thread.

So the government could be criticised for not spending enough money on the criminal justice system during the bubble relative to other areas. Yet it seems to have been cut disproportionately to other areas. I suppose the voters of Ireland care more about their hospitals and schools than they do about crime, but yet they complain constantly about perceived failings in this grossly underfunded yet relatively good criminal justice system.

Instead they talk about how the gardai aren't doing their jobs (most of them are) how judges are detached from reality (they're more clued in than joe soap) the DPP isn't prosecuting enough (true, but he doesn't have the money) and the lawyers are creaming it (a particular gripe is that prosecution and legal aid fees not only decreased in real terms over the last 10 years, but they have also been cut disproportionately more than other public contracts in the last few years; to put this in perspective, the government is also throwing silly money at a few big firms who advise them as regards the guarantee, nationalisations, NAMA etc and other areas of civil law).

Of course, there is nothing we can do about it now - we simply cannot increase spending and there have to be pay cuts and job losses throughout the sector (despite Croke Park agreement). But it should be noted as a big failing of the government that instead of actually trying to deal with crime, they instead swelled the numbers of patrol gardai and passed new crazy laws that aren't even being used in order to paper over the cracks.