Jennifer Horgan: Placing punishment on top of social inequality is a policy failure

Throughout the latter half of the last century, specific policy decisions directly affected the lives and behaviours of people from the northside of Cork

In the 1980s, the state began sending young (predominantly northside) men, still in their teenage years, to Spike Island — often for the crime of joyriding. When Spike Island closed, young men were sent up to Dublin, to Mountjoy, where more serious drug-related connections were made.

US President Donald Trump has forever championed the death penalty. In 1989, the property mogul took out full-page ads across New York newspapers, calling for the execution of the Central Park Five — a group of black and Hispanic teenagers wrongly accused of beating and raping a female jogger.

Their exoneration (by DNA and the confession of a convicted rapist and murderer) failed to move the man towards compassion. He wrote: "I want to hate these murderers, and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyse or understand them, I am looking to punish them."

During his first term, Trump carried out more executions than any president in modern history. Last Monday, he signed an executive order to ensure that all states have enough lethal injection drugs, and in his election campaign, he specifically called for the death penalty for the ‘heinous’ act of selling drugs.

How grateful we should be to live in Ireland and not America, to live in a country that is beginning to recognise and treat some of the root causes of addiction and crime. Selling drugs is a bigger offence but, at least here, our programme for government commits to diverting those found in possession of drugs for personal use to health services.

We are still in the initial stages of this shift in thinking, however, this enlightenment — and as is usually the case, our language trails behind.

One word that places us directly in the bed beside Trump is the word scumbag.

I often hear people calling other people bags of scum. Most usually, people call addicts and criminals bags of scum. 

The only issue with reducing an addict or a criminal to a bag of scum is that neither addiction nor criminality occur randomly. There is a pattern, easily mapped across any city.

Crime in Cork

Take Cork. Cork is a tale of two cities. I was born in one of them, on the southside in 1980. I left and returned and now, thanks to my many opportunities in life, live on a very pleasant road in a very pleasant suburb. Within two minutes I can access a hairdresser, post office, physio, chemist, fancy food shop, garage, or doctor. My road is lined with trees and, within a minute, I can walk my dog beneath a canopy of them, inside our local ‘fairy’ park. I never witness any crime, but when it does happen it’s met with that word.

Scumbag.

It gets repeated like lines sung by a disjointed choir, one voice after another. Cash gets taken from a nice family car during the night, and the word is shared without hesitation.

Scumbag — a bag of scum.

The word assumes criminals, often addicts, are born of lesser stuff. Scumbags lack resilience and integrity, not like us — here on the southside

I’ve been working in Knocknaheeny recently. In terms of the people there, it is the opposite of deprived, with a deep well of warmth, humour, and well-placed pride. But the place couldn’t be more infrastructurally or aesthetically different to my suburb. There are few trees, no parks, and no park benches. There is mostly concrete, and instead of fancy delicatessens and coffee shops, there are family resource centres and community hubs.

Structural injustices

I spoke to a wonderful Corkonian this week.

Shane O’Mahony is a criminologist interested in the relationship between drug addiction and broader socio-cultural structures and systems. He lives in the UK now and dedicates his time to analysing Cork through this lens.

We discussed parts of the northside during our chat, and the policies that shaped them, giving rise to disproportionate levels of addiction and crime.

Places like Knocknaheeny were developed to move people out of poor conditions in the inner city during the 1970s. They were developed to provide homes, but no greater thought was given to local amenities. The southside, in comparison, developed organically, buoyed by private investment and development.

But the structural injustices go far deeper, as Shane explained.

Some of these injustices were intended and some were not. In the 1980s, to provide opportunities for families doing well in areas like Knocknaheeny, the government introduced a £5,000 surrender grant scheme, inviting people to give up their council homes and move to private homes beyond the suburbs.

They moved people out of the area who were doing well and potentially supporting others to do well. Then they gave council houses to people with extremely complex needs. These people needed support and were in no position to offer any. Pair that with the recession, and the government created the perfect conditions for crime and addiction to take hold.

“It wasn't intentional but given that comparable housing policies had caused problems with crime and addiction in the US and UK previously, it wasn't completely unforeseeable either,” says Shane.

In that decade, while I was busy starting school in a leafy suburb a few miles away, the state decided to crack down on this upturn in crime, sending young (predominantly northside) men, still in their teenage years, to Spike Island from 1985 onward — often for the crime of joyriding.

Shane added: “When I conducted research interviewing people experiencing addiction who'd been incarcerated on Spike Island, many reported that they were prescribed anti-anxiety medication to deal with the emotional and physical difficulties they experienced due to the harsh conditions. Other local criminologists have reported similar findings."

When Spike Island closed, young men were sent up to Dublin, to Mountjoy, where more serious drug-related connections were made.

Throughout the latter half of the last century, specific policy decisions directly affected the lives and behaviours of people from the northside — right from its inception.

Cork prisoners study

When a study was carried out around the home addresses of Cork prisoners less than 20 years ago, it brought back startling results, Shane explains.

“74.1% of prisoners with Cork addresses came from the following areas: Knocknaheeny, Mayfield, Farranree, Gurranabraher, Churchfield, Togher, Fairhill, Mahon, and The Glen," he says. 

The highest number came from Knocknaheeny.

Findings like these are extremely helpful. If something is socially constructed, it becomes clear that it can be constructed differently, and then we can start to demand changes. It’s strangely hopeful — and no doubt a motivator for Shane in his work.

The ongoing debate between Micheál Martin and Simon Harris on the decriminalisation of cannabis is only the beginning when it comes to our national approach to addiction and crime. Heaping punishment on top of inequality simply doesn’t work.

This debate casts Harris, who is against decriminalisation, in a particularly bleak light. He is aware of the socio-economic links to addiction. He is aware that decriminalisation does not mean legalisation, as pointed out by Sarah Harte in her column last week. Misdemeanours can still be punishable, but within reason, and with due regard to a broader, more informed understanding of the nature of addiction and its role in crime.

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I scrolled through the recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly on Drugs Use this week. The assembly document has much to say about resilience: “Professor Pat Dolan, University of Galway, explained resilience as the capacity to bounce back or recover from adversity or trauma, and to do better in life than might be expected ... Resilience, he explained, happens where a person’s protective factors in life outweigh their risk factors.” 

When protective factors outweigh risk factors. So, people aren’t just born as bags of scum, then?

Words matter because people matter.

There are no scumbags. There are only humans. And every single human is worth that acknowledgement at least, of being human — whatever the uninformed, reckless, hateful MAGA/ Meta worlds might tell us.

Back in 1989, Trump declared: "Maybe hate is what we need if we're gonna get something done." 

A good rule of thumb for our incoming government is to look to what’s ‘getting done’ in America: and do the exact opposite.

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