Repeat offenders should face ‘five strikes’ policy
Barry Galvin, founding legal officer with the Criminal Assets Bureau and state solicitor for Cork up to late last year, said the policy could apply to offences such as burglaries where probation acts and suspended sentences were often used without much deterrent effect.
He read out the “rap” sheet of one criminal, who racked up 140 convictions in multiple court appearances, almost all for burglaries, before being jailed. The example was not unusual, Mr Galvin said.
“We should bring in a five-strike system, that every time a person commits another offence, he knows he is heading towards a prison sentence.”
He said burglars were now almost as brazen as the drug gangs were when Veronica Guerin was murdered. “They are taking on the State, they have no fear. It’s business. We have to come to a stage where they need to be taken off the road.”
Mr Galvin was addressing a seminar on drugs and criminality organised by the Irish Association of Former Parliamentarians.
He called for changes in the law to make it a crime for people caught with drugs not to reveal who supplied it to them, and for people caught robbing not to reveal who they sold or passed the stolen goods on to.
Meanwhile, James MacGuill, a criminal lawyer and a former president of the Law Society of Ireland, urged a rethink of the law on cannabis.
“There would be great benefits to having a mature debate potentially leading to the legalisation of certain currently proscribed drugs,” he said.
“You are going to take people out of the hands of organised criminals. You are going to ensure that users get a reliable product. You are going to have a situation where suppliers do not have an agenda of creating addiction to other substances.”
Legalisation would reduce drug debt that leads many people into crime and it would open the possibility of creating revenue for the State, he said.
Retired district court judge Gillian Hussey was among those who backed the call for a public discussion. “I would have been one to have said — and kept to it for many years — no, because it [cannabis] is a gateway drug, but I do see the argument and I could be persuaded with a good realistic debate.”
She said more resources were needed to tackle alcohol abuse. “If I saw six criminals who were sober when they committed crime in a year, that’s about all I ever saw. It’s certainly something that needs attention.”
Labour TD Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, a former school principal, said middle Ireland should rethink its attitude towards offenders and invest in early intervention programmes for children at risk of falling into criminality, educational supports to keep them in school, and initiatives to end segregation in housing, welfare and healthcare.
“Middle class Ireland needs to hear that it’s a simple case of bad people doing bad things. It makes them feel safer and more secure,” he said.
“They are told that there are bad areas where bad people do bad things to each other and as long as they are fed that line, the status quo will remain.”
