O'Donoghue to set up crime council on statutory basis

A council on crime with a broad membership, including all interest groups, is to be set up on a statutory basis, the Minister for Justice said yesterday.

Mr O'Donoghue said such a council would "have a role in relation to criminal justice matters" and an input into a White Paper on crime. The report of the National Crime Forum, a 32-member body, chaired by Prof Bryan McMahon, described the council as a "more permanent location where such proposed legislation will be subject to measured consideration on an ongoing basis."

The report was strongly critical of the existing prison system as an effective anti-crime deterrent. "We do not appear to have developed a clear idea as a nation of what we want our penal system to do."

Although the forum did not comment directly on the Government prison-building programme, it said the provision of extra prison places "would probably militate against any intention to substitute other sanctions for imprisonment".

"The wise course would be to use diversionary measures to reduce the demand for prison places in tandem with any programme to expand those places," it says.

The report also questioned the value of the proposal for drug courts if the resources for treatment of drug addicts are not provided. "Drug courts will not work unless there are adequate resources for such facilities as residential centres, day-centres, hostels, support groups, training and education."

Mr O'Donoghue defended the Government's prison-building programme yesterday. "The whole issue of prison spaces is in fact being implemented," he said. And while the report strongly endorses the idea that prison should be a "last resort', Mr O'Donoghue said the Government had not ruled out alternative sanctions.

But a spokesman for IMPACT, which represents probation officers, criticised the Government for failing to fund a recommendation made by its own expert group to recruit 75 new probation officers.

The service "remains without the capacity to provide adequate services in the critical areas of the agency's important work of interrupting offending," Mr Patrick O'Dea said last night.

The report said prison was "an expensive and potentially damaging option to be used with care". It described conditions in part of the system as "close to primitive".

The report said the media, "and perhaps the press in particular, has an obligation to act responsibly" in reporting crime and not to "generate unwarranted fear" among the public.

A reintroduction of compensation for crime victims, which could cost more than £40 million, was something the report said "should be considered". It criticised the "substantial lack of co-ordinated treatment facilities for drug-abusers, particularly teenage and adolescent abusers".

In his introduction, Prof McMahon, said a two-tier criminal justice system was developing in response to recent atrocities.

"For political/terrorist-type crimes we have special offences, special and extended police powers, more relaxed forms of evidence, special non-jury courts, different penalties and segregated detention.

"The real danger here is obvious: persons operating the system established to deal with political subversives soon come to imagine that the special powers given for special offences are the norm."

The report also suggested four "broad principles for young offenders". These would see family support programmes, community sanctions on those under 18, a move to imprison those aged under 18 only under exceptional circumstances, and not to imprison those under 21 alongside older prisoners.

The policy of "zero tolerance" was also examined, with the prognosis that it is a limited theory "more relevant to urban crime than rural crime". Another chapter was given to information and research, suggesting a network of research units in existing bodies be set up.