Sir, - When I was a consultant in the Royal Liverpool University Hospital in the early 1990s, I had the privilege of contributing to a Car Offenders Programme run by the Merseyside Probation Service. This structured week-long course for so-called "joyriders" was an option offered to persistent offenders by local magistrates, the alternative being a custodial sentence.
The week involved close contact between the offenders and those who had been bereaved by car violence, the insurance industry, police driving instructors, probation officers and doctors in our Accident and Emergency Department. The latter contribution was perhaps the most "notorious" among offenders who were shown (close-up and in cinematic format) the "medical" effects of joy-riding, i.e., injuries ranging from the trivial to the sickening.
Not surprisingly, many of the offenders were reduced by an hour of this from throwing shapes to throwing up.
The award-winning programme reduced the recidivist rate among participating car offenders from nearly 80 per cent (within one year of facing the magistrates) to about 25 per cent.
The incidental benefits were immense. They included (for contributors like myself) the deeply rewarding experience of seeing young villains metamorphose into vulnerable lost souls (who could be "reached") and a reduction in the misery they caused to society and bursting emergency departments.
I would urge the authorities in this State to quickly fund such a programme, involving affected communities, the Gardaí, the insurance industry and the many health-care workers in this country, who deal regularly with the effects of "joy-riding". Like road violence in general, "joy-riding" is a major public health problem that requires a rational approach to the (especially emotional and educational) deprivation which characterises those who engage in it. - Yours, etc.,
L.C.LUKE,
Consultant in Accident and Emergency Medicine,
Cork University Hospital,
Wilton,
Cork.