Crime and punishment: we must restore balance in favour of victim

IT is to be hoped that your front page lead story on June 28, headlined ‘Burglars beware: public set for greater rights’, does not presage this important issue being relegated to the status of a pre-election political football to be discarded once the votes are counted.

Across Europe, and especially in Ireland, the obsession with rights over responsibilities has led to the creation of a vandal and druggy underclass protected by unbalanced laws and legal processes in which the protection of the criminal engaged in illegal activity is valued more highly than the victim’s right to quiet enjoyment of home, life and property.

We have too much law, but not enough justice. It is long past time that the Government woke up to the alienation of ordinary decent people who are becoming sick of being burgled, mugged and offended with little or no reaction from gardaí.

One only has to sit in at any social gathering to hear personal accounts of good people terrorised by violence and crime being told by gardaí to close their doors and keep their heads down lest their windows be smashed, their children beaten up and their pets poisoned. What sort of guardianship of the peace is this — the Government should fear the wrath of the silent majority, for if the State abdicates its core responsibility to protect its citizens, then it can hardly object, and should certainly not prosecute, if those citizens seek to defend themselves and their families.

The current abrogation of responsibility can only lead to vigilantism. This would not be right in any civilised society committed to the rule of law, but it will only be prevented if the State takes its responsibilities more seriously, stops weakening the role of the family, enforces the responsibility of parents to control their offspring and locks up more criminals more often in institutions which properly educate and reform rather than in the current narcotic academies.

Fine Gael is to be congratulated for bringing this issue to the Dáil.

It is now for the Government to show its commitment by bringing forward comprehensive and sustained reform to promote the protection of the individual over the rights of the criminal.

Jim Corbett

1 Tracton Ave

Montenotte

Cork