Crime: let’s start by enforcing the laws we’ve got
She said his rejection of a call for new draconian laws in response to the murders of two Polish men in Drimnagh made her “sick”.
She went on to say communities across Dublin have been calling for such measures “for decades, but have been ignored” and that it is “a real kick in the stomach to know our politicians have no desire to change the law”.
Ms Stafford fails to recognise, as was pointed out by Gay Mitchell on RTÉ’s Questions & Answers, that politicians have in fact shown too strong a desire to change the law, and have done so far too often without taking cognisance of the realities that prevail in communities. Far from ignoring such calls for decades, as Ms Stafford contends, by my own rough count, the Oireachtas has enacted 13 pieces of criminal justice legislation in the 10 years since 1997.
Each new law has been more draconian than the one which directly preceded it: garda powers of arrest have been increased, detention times have been extended and harsher sentences are now imposed.
The five years when Michael McDowell was Justice Minister have arguably seen the introduction of draconian legislation, the kind of which has not been enacted since the height of the IRA terrorist campaign.
And yet, under Fianna Fáil, violent crime has risen inexorably since 1999.
Ms Stafford rightly dismisses poverty, lack of facilities, alcohol and the other usual refrains as excuses for violent crime.
Why, then, does she fall for the equally spurious scapegoat that politicians are not creating enough laws to solve the problem? What possible legislative pronouncement from the Dáil could have prevented the murders of Pawel Kalite and Marius Szwajkos?
Were those who murdered them likely to have been deterred from doing so by viewing an edition of RTÉ’s Oireachtas report?
Clearly, there is some root cause of our crime problem which goes far beyond the willingness of our politicians to legislate. As a community, which extends far beyond the inner city of Dublin, we have very difficult questions to ask about what has caused individuals such as the youths involved in this murder to believe they could commit the crime with impunity.
As a country, we badly need a conversation with ourselves and with each other to see what has allowed our society to sink to such a level.
This is a debate which needs to be reasoned and without the kind of emotion which has seen Ms Stafford single out and attack an individual politician.
But in the short term, we need to properly enforce the laws that we have — not enact even more draconian measures which are likely to be as ineffective as those introduced during the last bout of public outrage.
Barry Walsh
Brooklawn
Clontarf
Dublin 3
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