Sir, – The new Justice Indicators Report published today by the Centre for Justice and Law Reform of the Law Society of Ireland and examined in an Opinion piece in The Irish Times by Mark Garrett, director general of the Law Society of Ireland, reveals some worrying features of our criminal justice system (“Ireland’s justice system is operating with too many data blind spots,” February 4th).
The report finds that the average length of time for criminal cases to be processed in the Irish courts is 541 days compared with only 168 days average in the 46 member countries of the Council of Europe.
This is a whopping three times longer than our colleagues. No evidence is available to explain the huge discrepancy. Justice delayed is justice denied for the victims of crime.
In the case of the Irish prison system, the findings are equally worrying. The average prison sentence served in Ireland is five to six months, compared with 10-12 months on average across the 46 Council of Europe countries.
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Again there is no data available to explain the discrepancy. But the implications are stark. The vast majority of offenders in the prison system are serving very short sentences. This is the reason why all our prisons are overcrowded. This is the reason why the Department of Justice is proposing a major programme of new and expensive prison construction.
Surely, the Irish public deserve to know why Ireland is so out of kilter with our Council of Europe counterparts in processing criminal cases in the courts? Likewise, it is imperative to know why so many offenders are being committed to short terms in prison instead of being sentenced to noncustodial punishments.
As Mark Garrett rightly concluded in his article: “Ireland must build a justice system that is not only fair and effective but genuinely evidence-driven”. – Yours, etc.
Joe Costello,
Dublin 7.
