Mick Clifford: Build more prisons? Give it a break, Leo
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar: 'If people want dangerous people locked up for a long time, we're going to need more room in our prisons.'
Sometimes the oldest gags are the best. Whenever Fine Gael is in trouble, it turns to a favourite tool of deflection: law and order. So it was at the party conference in Co Kildare at the weekend.
Leo Varadkar was asked about the comments of Judge Tony Hunt last week, during the sentencing hearing for Jozef Puska, the man convicted of murdering Ashling Murphy.
Judge Hunt noted that his hands were tied by the law. Life is the mandatory prison sentence for murder, but that doesn’t mean a convicted person’s natural life. In other jurisdictions, the sentencing judge has the power to impose a minimum term to be served, but that is not provided for in Irish legislation. Instead, a lifer can be due for parole after twelve years, but the average term served is twenty. Up until 2021, the Minister for Justice of the day decided on when a lifer got released. Since then the function has passed to a parole board.
Judge Hunt, reflecting the abhorrent nature of Ms Murphy’s murder, stated that he could not impose a minimum sentence but that if he could he would have considered a whole of life sentence.
Varadkar was asked were the plans to allow judges discretion in this respect. He said the government was examining it but that if minimum sentences were introduced more prison spaces would be needed.
“I know people don't like to talk about it but we do need adequate prison spaces. Not because I want to see a higher incarceration rate, I don't, but if we're genuinely serious about locking up very dangerous people, murderers, rapists, paedophiles, the heads of major criminal gangs for 20, 30, 40 years, and I think that's what people want, and with the rising population, we're going to need more prison spaces,” the Taoiseach said.
“I know it's not popular to talk about it, I'm sure I'll be denounced by the righteous ones and various others for even suggesting this, but if people want dangerous people locked up for a long time, we're going to need more room in our prisons,” he said.
Build more prisons is the catch-call of right-wing politics the world over. It’s the law and order card, conveying to the public that this particular party is the only one you can trust to keep you safe in your home. In this instance, the Taoiseach is attempting to message voters that Fine Gael are different from all the rest and you can trust your safety with them. Normally, this message would come wrapped in rhetoric about putting more gardaí on the street but right now there is a recruitment and retention issue in the gardaí. So more prison places are a safer bet in playing the law and order card.
The problem with the Taoiseach’s line at the weekend is that governments in which he has served over the last ten years have entirely ignored the sentencing policy issue raised by Judge Hunt.
Judges in criminal courts should have a say in the minimum length of time on a life sentence. Their conclusions would be based on the facts of the case as elicited in a trial. Such a policy serves natural justice.
However, this didn’t just arise out of the blue last week in the Puska trial. In 2013 the Law Reform Commission called for greater discretion of judges in sentencing for murder.
“The commission recommends that where an offender is convicted of murder, and is therefore sentenced to life imprisonment, legislation should provide that the judge may recommend a minimum term to be served by the offender,” the report stated.
On the basis of Mr Varadkar’s comments, one would never think that Fine Gael had been in government for the last decade. Surely his call for more prison places was not designed to deflect this inaction?
Equally, his suggestion that imposing a minimum term on a life sentence would lead to filling up the prisons is curious. For the greater part, the terms served would probably differ little from the current regime. Josef Puska is highly unlikely to see the outside of a prison for thirty years, or even more. What would be different is that the minimum term imposed would be a direct reflection on the gravity of the crime, rather than being decided decades afterward by a parole board with little or no firsthand knowledge of the details. The length of all other prison sentences is decided on the basis of evidence in court, so why not this one?
But throwing in the building of prisons sounds good when attempting to deflect from a failure over ten years to give due consideration to this issue. You don’t have to be righteous to spot what exactly Mr Varadkar was about with his righteous pledge to lock ‘em up.
