Sarah Harte: Radical change of penal policy needed as we are losing war on drugs

The relationship between alcohol and cocaine has seen the use of the illegal narcotic rocket in this country, bringing more and more people to the attention of the law, especially young people, where strict punishments mean many lives are ruined. Sarah Harte questions our strategy to defeat illegal drugs and if there is a better alternative.

A radical rethink of our entire approach to drugs is needed, which would also potentially benefit young ‘recreational’ drug users.

Last Friday, in the Cork Central Criminal Court, Judge Sarah Berkeley, handed down a three-year sentence to Elyas Eshaji for possession of cocaine for sale or supply, suspending the last six months.

A week prior, on June 24, Judge Berkely said, after hearing the evidence in the case, that she was “struggling to know what to do with him”, remanding him in custody for a week, adding: “It will give him a taste of prison life. Maybe that will cause him to swallow hard and think about what he is doing.”

A week later, defence Senior Counsel Ray Boland asked the judge to adjourn the case until October, readmitting him to bail, to give him a chance to change his peer group, prove he was maturing, and provide clear urinalysis.

Judge Berkeley refused the application and sent him to jail. A contributing factor was almost certainly the fact that, in the interim period between his detection and his sentencing, Elyas Eshaji came to the attention of the guards, the court was told.

'Tough on Crime'

A former Cork City FC youth player, he had shown promise until drug use compromised his sporting career.

In 2021, Elyas Eshaji was detected in Kinsale with cocaine with a street value exceeding €13,000 — the threshold figure for a mandatory jail term of 10 years, saving exceptional circumstances.

In practice, judges often depart from the 10-year minimum presumptive sentence because it is accepted this is a dodgy piece of legal drafting based on crude, arbitrary measures of street value that cynically allowed successive governments to claim they were “tough on crime” while leaving judges to pick up the pieces in the courts.

The American ‘tough on crime’ stance or ‘War on Drugs’, first adopted in the Nixon era, has been a colossal policy failure. The US prison system has ruined lives, filled prisons, and cost a fortune while the illicit drug trade thrives.

So, what can 19-year-old Elyas Eshaji expect in prison? Will he be deterred from reoffending, and rehabilitated; two objectives of the punishment of prison.

Merchants Quay Ireland operates an addiction counselling service in our prisons. However, comments in April, from Caron McCaffrey, the Director-General of the Irish Prison Service speaking at the Prison Officers Association annual conference, were discouraging.

She noted that although around 70% of people arrive in prison with a drug/drink problem, very little can be done to rehabilitate the 80% of our prison population in for a year or less. She added that spending €80,000 per prisoner per year was both expensive and ineffective.

She also committed to tackling the flow of drugs into prisons with significant volumes intercepted this year and last. The prison chief also outlined measures, including screening of prison officers and families and friends visiting jails.

And then there’s the question of prison’s effectiveness.

Interpreting recidivism rates is one measure of the performance of a criminal justice system. According to the CSO figures in 2021, almost half of prisoners released in 2018 re-offended within a year.

Younger people have higher custodial re-offending rates: more than four in five under 21s re-offend within three years of release.

The Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT) say our recidivism rates remain high when compared with other European jurisdictions and have called for a distinct approach to offending by young adults, including investment in health, community, and social services.

A 2020 research report on recidivism by Professor Ian O’Donnell of UCD, published by the Department of Justice and Equality, refers to a growing body of evidence showing short stints of imprisonment are less effective in reducing offending than suspended sentences or community service and points out that custodial sentences are also much more expensive to administer.

The report also suggests that going to prison has adverse effects including being criminogenic (likely to cause further criminal behaviour) and that “for substance misuse, public health-based harm-minimisation approaches seem to hold the most promise”.

Portugal approach

In the 80s and 90s, the Portuguese government, much like the US, following a conservative line on drugs, introduced increasingly harsh criminal justice policies.

In 2001, the country floundering in a wave of heroin addiction, they radically reversed approach, becoming the first country in the world to decriminalise personal drug use and possession and moved the focus from criminal punishment to treatment and management of drug users by health and welfare agencies.

Portugal now has some of the lowest usage rates in Europe between the ages of 15-34. Their policy rests on three pillars: no distinction between soft and hard drugs; that somebody’s unhealthy relationship with drugs often conceals frayed relationships, with family and beyond; and that eradication of drugs is an impossible goal. According to a 2022 Health Research Board study, between 2011 and 2019, there has been a 171% increase in the number of young Irish people treated for cocaine use.

Ecstasy and cocaine use here is the second highest in Europe with cannabis the most used drug. Cocaine usage is reported as an epidemic in the GAA with a Laois club in February tabling a motion to educate young players on the effects of drugs.

In May, several shopkeepers in Cork City took foil-wrapped products off their shelves due to a surge in visible heroin dealing and consumption in the city centre. This prompted the city’s previous Lord Mayor Colm Kelleher to call in April for a supervised injection centre, saying we needed “an adult conversation” about drugs.

A 2015 Oireachtas committee report said that we should follow the Portuguese model by offering counselling and other assistance to people caught by gardaí with small quantities of drugs rather than prosecute them. The response would be civil or administrative rather than a criminal justice one.

Most drug users do not escalate to drug dealing but a striking commonality in many court reports is that the accused will typically have begun taking cannabis or cocaine in his/her early to mid-teens, becoming addicted to one or more substances. Often, he/she will amass drug debts before graduating to holding drugs for unnamed others or becoming active in the sale of drugs.

Rethink

A new penal policy is to offer judges alternative sanctions to short periods of imprisonment but maybe a radical rethink of our entire approach to drugs is needed which would also potentially benefit young ‘recreational’ drug users.

More and more families are experiencing drug-related crises but change would require a major cultural shift, the stigma surrounding drug use, heightened by many years of punitive policies, remains deeply entrenched in Ireland.

The elephant in the room of course is our deeply messed-up attitude to alcohol; cocaine and alcohol are natural bedfellows.

Drug use and addiction are weighty topics. The Portuguese are correct that it miscalculates human behaviour to imagine you can eradicate drug use.

Certain people are going to use drugs, for many diverse reasons: genetics; to mask other problems; or simply because they like getting high. In turn, others will advance from using to dealing.

Elyas Eshaji went to prison last week for going down the wrong road; he is not the first nor will he be the last.

In a cost-benefit analysis, it must be asked if either he, or society will be well served by his sentence.