Minister outlines criminal justice inspectorate plans at FG Ardfheis

A new criminal justice inspectorate may be put in place to amalgamate the Garda Inspectorate, the Inspector of Prisons and the Prison Service, Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald has told the Fine Gael national conference.

Ms Fitzgerald said the North’s criminal justice inspectorate “provides a model that might be followed”.

She will start a consultation process “to hear the views of all those concerned” before making a final decision.

The Garda Inspectorate and Inspector of Prisons were both doing an excellent job, she said but there was “no joined up approach”, because “they cannot follow an offender through the system and make recommendations as to how the agencies could work more efficiently together to reduce re-offending”.

Stressing the importance of oversight, Ms Fitzgerald said they could not tackle crime effectively “unless we have confidence and trust in the integrity of our law enforcement agencies and those agencies work together in an effective way to address crime”.

The inspectorate would carry out inspections and make recommendations about the efficiency and effectiveness of individual agencies and the criminal justice system as a whole and how different agencies interacted.

It would also inspect prisons and “make recommendations concerning safeguarding the rights of detained persons and protecting against abuse”.

Ms Fitzgerald said “such an Inspectorate, I believe, would ensure that all the criminal justice agencies would be measured by the same standard and have to have the same respect for human rights”.

The Minister said that historically victims were seen as “little more than an inevitability, a statistic” and she had signalled to gardaí that “I want that changed”.

She plans new legislation this year for the implementation of the EU victims’ directive and new Garda victim support offices are to be established in every Garda division.

Ms Fitzgerald reminded about 100 delegates at the first session of the second day of the national conference that Fine Gael stood for preserving law and order.

She said of the Templemore Garda College that “we re-opened that college and we won’t let it close again”.

During a question and answer session on the theme of the debate “Crackdown on Crime”, Ms Fitzgerald said “we will have more gardaí, and more ongoing, seamless recruitment in Templemore”.

Highlighting the “heinous crime” of burglary, the Minister said she was examining the question of consecutive sentences for repeat offenders.

The Government would “free up prison space so that those who should be imprisoned are imprisoned. So that serious, serial and violent offenders are put behind bars and kept there.”

Other new provisions include “more rigorous screening, search and detection” for drugs in prisons, expansion of the canine unit and the creation of a national treatment centre for prisoners in Mountjoy who want to address drug addiction.

Signalling a change in policy direction, Ms Fitzgerald said that minimum mandatory sentences did not actually have “any measurable effect on reducing crime”.

She said many people were convinced that further minimum mandatory sentences would be worth introducing.

“The reality is that such sentences can actually reduce the flexibility of the system in diverting people away from repeat offending. Furthermore research within my Department clearly shows that the rate of re-offending for people sent to prison is actually higher than those who were dealt with by the Probation Service.”

Ms Fitzgerald will also bring proposals next month to Government for legislation on reforming the general law on bail.

Dr Mary Rogan, head of law at DIT, told the conference that prison "is over used in Ireland", which had the second highest rate in the EU of sending people to prison, at 375 per 100,000 of population.

She said “we must break with the idea that prison is the only real form of punishment”.

Dr Rogan told the conference that Scotland and the US were moving away “from seeing prison as the best or only” punishment.

She said it was not a question of being soft on crime or being brave. It was about “being effective”.