Why don’t Irish authorities pay rewards to information on criminals leading to a conviction

Did you smash it · 04-01-2022 06:21PM #1

The US do. Why not us?

Esel · 04-01-2022 08:07PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058225872/why-don-t-irish-authorities-pay-rewards-to-information-on-criminals-leading-to-an-arrest

The US has the death penalty. Why don't we?

Did you smash it · 04-01-2022 09:41PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118417920#Comment_118417920

Because among many reasons the death penalty is an extremely controversial topic that would face public protests.

i’ve answered your question, feel free to answer mine.

Jequ0n · 04-01-2022 09:46PM

Because you get a lot of time wasters **** up the investigations.

04-01-2022 10:03PM

American federal authorities and in most cases state authorities have much larger budgets than the Garda, basically.

i doubt most stations could afford to offer a reward for the Top 10 most wanted nor might they be worth an award & the ones who are may be considered too dangerous to seek the public to come forward for risk of their safety.

04-01-2022 10:13PM

https://justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/WP15000275

macraignil · 04-01-2022 10:20PM

I had thought there was an existing lack of capacity for the people the Irish authorities already know could be put in prison. Paying to find out about more would be a waste of time and money as they'd have to release more than are already let out early to make room for the new arrests. The prison system in the USA is from what I have heard much more developed, with a huge capacity and these figures show they already have the highest number of prisoners per head of population compared to other countries so I'm not sure they would be a model we should try to follow.

Victor · 04-01-2022 11:31PM

Rewarding arrests is useless. If anything, you want to reward convictions.

Sometimes rewards are offered, sometimes the Secret Service budget is used.

Peregrinus · 05-01-2022 02:46AM

There's a couple of issues:

There's a very, very strong animus in Irish culture against informers, especially paid informers. So it's not clear that offering rewards would motivate a lot of people. You might have to offer very large rewards to get people to overcome their own repugnance, and that of their family and social connections. You could spend quite a lot of money getting relatively little information. Other issues aside, this might not the most cost-efficient way to spend your budget.
Evidence for which people have been paid is automatically suspect. I think juries might be very slow to convict on the basis of such evidence. Can you be sure beyond reasonable doubt that the paid informer is speaking the truth, rather than saying what will earn him the most money?

The fact is that rewards are offered, but only in selected instances, where the guards have a pretty shrewd idea (a) of the specific information that they want, and (b) of who is likely to have it, and (c) that the people likely to have it are likely to be motivated by the offer of a reward.

Did you smash it · 05-01-2022 11:46AM

to address some of the points.

i would agree that not offering rewards is down to not wanting to spend The money and also The fact that there has never been a Zodiac style active serial killer in Ireland that The authorities are clueless on and desperate to see a result.

to say we dont want to copy The american prison system…well i think we want to cherry pick The best of The american judicial system.. we dont want to throw people in prison for minor Drug possession charges. But i think there are other things that happen in The American system that we could do well to consider copying.

i dont think anyone should be tried solely on The Basis of testimony being offered by someone receiving a reward.

the podcast The Witness covered what happens to someone who offered testimony within The irish system on a murderer. Its a compelling story but didnt reflect well on The irish treatment of key state witnesses.

05-01-2022 01:20PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118420217#Comment_118420217

That story was very sad, there are however plenty of others in WP who have had a better life elsewhere. Unfortunately for that guy, he no longer has any protection.

Why don’t Irish authorities pay rewards to information on criminals leading to a conviction

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