The Politics of Crime

THE country is anguished, as not in living memory, over the murder of Veronica Guerin

THE country is anguished, as not in living memory, over the murder of Veronica Guerin. There is palpable anger in the streets, on the airwaves. Its extent and its intensity are without precedent. And it shows this State and this society at a dangerous pass.

We are among the more fortunate of peoples in having a stable political system in this part of Ireland. We have a generally good Government under John Bruton.

But it has been more than depressing to hear and to watch the members of this Government, as with its predecessors in other moments of tragedy, react in a combination of fluster and of cliche, as the tide of anger reaches this high point. For they have done so little over the years. And because they have fooled nobody, rushing from one crime problem to another, with platitudes about Gardit resources and the Government's "firm intentions" to come to grips with drugs today, attacks on the elderly tomorrow, armed robbery the day after the list goes on.

This is not about politics. Nora Owen has been at least as industrious as her predecessors at the Department of Justice. And nobody will doubt John Bruton's commitment to the rule of law. What we are dealing with here is an ingrained paralysis which crosses party lines, inherited attitudes which have regarded the police and the judiciary as promising fields for rewarding party affiliates and unforgivable, deep-seated incompetence. There is no policy-based approach to criminal justice. There is no tradition - as with other areas such as health, education or social services - of identifying priorities, of co-ordinating programmes and resources or of defining objectives.

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WHERE politics has played a role is in blocking action. Mrs Owen's bail proposals were first checkmated by the other parties in Government. Her prisons programme was vetoed by Ruairi Quinn. There is no effective anti-drugs agency because political considerations dictated a fudge between the functions of gardaf, Customs officers and the Naval Service. Ministerial and civil service territoriality means that co-operation between the police, the Revenue and the Department of Social Welfare is lacking. And no politician has had the courage to pick up on the plea from the DPP to abridge the right to silence in certain cases where, he acknowledges, it is simply not possible to secure a conviction.

As for the Garda, anybody who talks to senior officers will know that, insofar as serious crime is concerned, they have resigned themselves to a condition of marginal relevance. Significantly, senior gardai have largely ceased to call for additional resources in equipment or manpower. Garda equipment is excellent and strength is adequate. What they lack are the legal instruments to elicit evidence and t9 secure_convictions.

It is this cumulative failure of the State to meet its obligations which has allowed the emergence of the crime culture which Veronica Guerin wwte about. It has not happened overnight. We have watched over twenty years as it grew, always becoming more emboldened and more professionalised, with the State's response always trailing behind, always reactive and always ad hoc. And we have listened as ministers have denied the realities.

Nora Owen points to annualised murder figures to argue that there has not been a significant deterioration. But how can anyone fail to see the enormity of the menace in a dozen assassinations - with no arrests - in Dublin city? Or that it is qualitatively different from a similar number of deaths in disco brawls or domestic disputes?

THE anger over the death of Veronica Guerin and the grief for her husband and young are justified, not merely by the savage fact of her shooting, but by the pathetic performance of successive governments. For the reality is that we are not dealing here with a criminal underworld on a grand scale. We are not coping with crime rates the equivalent of those in the UK, in other EU countries or in North America. We are dealing with a small grouping of people and with a crime problem which is still of manageable proportions. It is this reality which makes the State's response all the more shameful.

The Government has announced what seem like far-reaching proposals. But it is a dangerous time and emotions are running high. The new measures will have to be examined closely. This is not to argue that action should not be radical, but that it should be considered, that it should be subject to review and that it should be within judicial, rather than executive, authority.

This newspaper has repeatedly urged that the Government should establish a commission on criminal justice, and it does so now again. To establish such a body is not incompatible with taking early steps to meet immediate and self-evident needs. Such a commission would have as its brief: to quantify and define the crime problem from the relatively minor to the very serious; to assess the required responses in policing, the courts and in the prisons; to examine crime and society's responses to it in other, comparable countries; to set out clearly for the community the choices it faces for the future in regard to criminal justice.

The report of the Commission on the Newspaper Industry, chaired by the former Chief Justice, Mr T. A. Finlay, shows how to get to the roots of an issue rather than responding to crises as they occur.