Murder rate - Too simplistic to just throw away the key

There was a time when there was little more than a murder a year in this country, but now it has become a weekly occurrence.

Maybe we were poorer then, but society as a whole seemed to have better values.

In the first 40 weeks of 2007 there were 42 murders. The murder rate is up by 26% on the same period last year.

John Daly, 27, was murdered in Dublin in the early hours of Monday morning, while he sat in a taxi with six other people.

He will probably be best remembered for his telephone call to Joe Duffy’s Liveline programme on RTÉ radio from Portlaoise Prison shortly before the last election. This sparked the crackdown on mobile telephones within prisons.

The current spate of murders will inevitably foster suggestions of simplistic solutions, calling on society to lock people up and throw away the key.

Yet history tells us that societies that ignore the dictates of justice usually end up with even worse problems.

However, we must face the problem and confront the challenges that it poses.

The Taoiseach said yesterday it was time that society stopped tolerating casual violence in the streets. His government should provide the lead by initiating a proper debate on our system of justice.

Are we going to resort to draconian measures and be content with what might be called jungle justice, or will we try to ensure that there is an element of restorative justice that seeks to reform the wayward in line with Christian values?

What element of paramilitary violence still exists in our society? Is our prison system as effective as it might be?

There must be a proper debate on the issues. Having said that, however, there must also be a determined effort on the part of the gardaí and the courts to ensure that those responsible for violent crime are dealt with effectively and without any prevarication by anybody.

John Daly was convicted of armed robbery and released early but returned to jail to finish out his sentence, after he was convicted of threatening to kill a garda and to harm a member of the garda’s family. Even if he was a dangerous criminal, this should not mean that society should take his murder lightly.

A life is a life and we should not make judgment calls on those who have been murdered.

Instead, we should recognise such killings as a failure of our criminal justice system.

The criminals are not just killing each other; innocent people have already been killed this year, because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gangland warfare endangers everybody.

The brutal murder of Paul Quinn, 21, in Co Monaghan should be a warning. He was apparently killed because he refused to be intimidated by criminal elements.

Gerry Adams denounced that killing in forthright terms, and he called on Sinn Féin supporters to cooperate with the PSNI and gardaí. There was a time when it would have been virtually inconceivable for a Sinn Féin leader to speak out freely in this way.

Mr Adams and his party would do society a real service if they demonstrated their sincerity by providing the help to bring the culprits to justice.