Protecting citizens - State may not be doing enough

In an ideal world an individual would never have to confront an intruder in their home. In an ideal world the courts system would impose the kind of sanctions that would deter most criminals from relatively petty crimes such as burglary or fuel theft.

In an ideal world our prison system would have the capacity to guarantee that any custodial sentence handed down by our courts could be served in full. In an ideal world every citizen, no matter how remote their home, should be able to feel that they can get police protection or support within a reasonable period of time.

But, as events of recent weeks have shown, we live in a far from ideal world. The spate of attacks on homes, and especially the attacks on elderly people living alone, has pushed this subject, a hardy if unwelcome annual, back onto the public stage.

So much so that the Irish Farmers’ Association has sought a meeting with Justice Minister Alan Shatter to discuss the situation. So much so that Galway City councillor Padraig Conneely, who is also chairman of a joint policing committee, has said he would have no hesitation in shooting an intruder if he found one in his home. “I believe one body laid out on a slab after a robbery would put an end to robberies in the area pretty lively,” he declared. The Fine Gael representative may have been more direct than many people might choose to be, in words at least, but he undoubtedly reflected a growing concern among those who feel they have been left exposed by policing and justice systems they consider to be in retreat.

We all know that too many court sentences are merely nominal and that people convicted of a crime, no matter what their record, often serve just a portion of the jail term imposed by courts. The only person who benefits from this is the criminal. In the process, the integrity of our justice system, not to mention the morale of the gardaí who secured the conviction, is greatly undermined, as are the reasonable expectations of the victims of crime. We all know that under current plans, swathes of rural and not so rural Ireland will see far fewer gardaí in communities than is ideal. Unfortunately we know, too, that unemployment and a dreadful economic situation are behind some of the crimes, but that is no consolation to victims.

Next year it will be a decade since Mayo farmer Padraig Nally shot intruder John “The Frog” Ward dead. The ensuing debate divided the country but it did lead to the Criminal Law (Defence Dwelling) Act 2011 which clarifies the options available to people to protect themselves and their property. The act allows for reasonable force by people who believe they need to use it to protect people in dwellings from assault, to protect property, to prevent a crime, or to make an arrest. The law no longer requires a homeowner to retreat from a burglar and extends to lands immediately around a dwelling.

Of course many of those definitions are subjective, but the enfeeblement of our courts, our prison system and the gardaí ensure that those definitions will be tested in court sooner or later. When that point is reached it will be fair to ask if the State, by its failure to properly protect citizens through our courts, our prison service, or our police system is partially culpable and if it has exposed its citizens to unacceptable risk.