Four ways to deal with crime committed during bail

LET us assume for the moment that crime committed by persons on bail is a serious problem. Let us assume also that we are serious about dealing with that problem instead of engaging in political stunts as a cover for inaction.

There are four simple measures that could be enacted which would have an immediate and dramatic effect on the levels of crime committed on bail and which would avoid the invidiousness of imprisoning innocent people for crimes they might commit rather than imprisoning guilty people for crimes they have committed.

The first of these measures would be a simple legislative change removing from judges the discretion to suspend consecutive sentences for crime committed by persons on bail. This has been repeatedly promised, but nothing has been done.

When consecutive sentencing first began to "bite" in 1986 as a result of the Criminal Justice Act 1984, the number of detected crimes committed by persons on bail fell from 4,775 in 1985 to 2,121 in 1986, a fall of over 50 per cent. These figures began to rise again in 1993 when judges began to suspend the consecutive sentences. Isn't it at least plausible that a further legislative change would have a similarly dramatic effect on crime committed on bail?

The second simple measure would be to reduce drastically the period between a person being charged with a crime and being tried for that crime. At present, that period can extend over several years and rarely is it less than a year. As the Supreme Court stated last July in the Quinn case, there is no good reason why in most cases the trial doesn't take place within a matter of days of a charge being brought, not weeks or months or, years.

If there is enough evidence to charge a person with a crime, there should be enough evidence to proceed with the trial forthwith except in exceptional cases. It is obvious that a drastic reduction in the period between charge and trial would itself greatly reduce the number of crimes committed by persons on bail.

THE third measure would be to get serious about the crime of "failure to answer bail". As stated in this column last week, this crime doesn't even get a mention in the annual Garda report on crime and there is no system within the Garda to make known the identity of those who have broken bail.

The fourth measure would be to tackle the drugs problem seriously by providing adequate methadone and detoxification facilities and dealing seriously with the social and economic conditions that give rise to drug abuse. A large proportion of total crime is related to drugs and it is reasonable to assume that a large proportion of crime committed on bail is also drug-related.

What these measures lack is the stunt effect. They don't convey the sense of "grasping the nettle", "meeting head-on the hardened criminals" or "drug barons". They suffer from the defect of being merely effective. Although obviously these measures should be implemented, the reality is that there is not a problem of crime committed on bail; certainly not that comes close to justifying the infringement of civil liberties which the proposed constitutional and legislative changes involve.

The first indication of the absence of a problem of crime committed by persons on bail is that, as the Law Reform Commission has pointed out, the Irish figures on offending on bail are lower than the English figures, despite the fact that in England courts may refuse bail on grounds of possible commission of further offences.

The second indication is that the available evidence shows the vast majority of offences committed by persons on bail are what most of us would regard as "non-serious" crimes. The Law Reform Commission report on bail shows that in 1993 3,201 crimes were detected as having been committed by persons on bail, but only 15 of these would be considered by most of us to be serious: eight armed robberies, two rapes and five assaults.

A third indication is that the available evidence suggests that the total number of crimes committed by persons on bail is very low. In 1995 it was reported that 5,440 crimes were detected as having been committed by persons on bail. This represents slightly more than 5 per cent of the total number of reported crimes.

It is argued that this figure understates the number of crimes committed on bail, but there is evidence to suggest that it might overstate it. For instance, the Law Reform Commission report shows that, in 1993 of the 3,201 so-called "detected" crimes. committed on bail, there were only 1,409 convictions, i.e. 44 per cent. One way or another, there is no indication that the number of crimes committed by persons on bail represents a significant proportion of total crime, let alone a significant proportion of serious crimes.

MUCH is being made of the fact that Ireland is believed to have the most liberal bail laws in the western world and that this somehow justifies us in introducing illiberal bail laws. Take the country whose legal system is most like our own, a common law tradition within the context of a written constitution, the United States.

It is true that the US Supreme Court has permitted the refusal of bail to persons suspected of being likely to commit crimes while on bail. But this was achieved only because the Nixon and Reagan appointees on the US Supreme Court managed to secure a majority over the other judges. The key case was US v Salerno in 1987.

In a vigorous dissenting judgment the great liberal black judge on the court, Mr Justice Marshall, said that statutes permitting such preventive detention were consistent with the usages of tyranny and the excesses of what this experience teaches us to call the police state, have long been thought incompatible with the fundamental human rights protected by our constitution."

He said the majority decision of the court disregards basic principles of justice established centuries ago and enshrined beyond the reach of governmental interference in the Bill of Rights.

Just seven years ago our own Supreme Court deliberated on the bail issue. The then Chief Justice, Thomas Finlay, said: "The criminalising of mere intention has been usually a badge of an oppressive or unjust system. The proper methods for preventing crime are a long-established combination of police surveillance, speedy trial and deterrent sentences. Section 11 of the Criminal Justice Act 1984, which provides mandatory consecutive sentences for offences committed while on bail, constitutes a good example of such a deterrent."

On top of all this, there is the lunacy of the inevitability that jailing people for crimes they might commit will mean releasing people who have been jailed for crimes they have committed.

If this measure is passed and then implemented by the courts, it will bear most on those already suffering from our system of injustice; those daily before our courts, the poor, beaten and deprived. It will be a further debasement of what remains of our civilised society.

Vote No.