Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
  • Publication
    The Life Sentence and Parole
    (Oxford University Press, 2012-01) ;
    Taking the life sentence as the new 'ultimate penalty' for many countries, this paper explores the factors associated with the release of life-sentence prisoners on parole. The Republic of Ireland is selected as a case study because it is in the unusual position of being influenced by European human rights norms as well as by the Anglo-American drive towards increased punitiveness. As an apparent outlier to both the human rights and punitive approaches, or perhaps as a hybrid of sorts, the relative impact of the two models can be elucidated. The article also provides an example of how small penal systems can be resistant to broader trends and the value of directing the criminological gaze upon countries where it seldom falls.
    Scopus© Citations 25  1156
  • Publication
    Confusingly compliant with the ECHR: The Release of Life Sentence Prisoners in Ireland
    The release of life sentence prisoners has been criticised for its discretionary and political nature and the failure to afford basic procedural rights to prisoners seeking early release. The process, which has not changed for many years, contrasts with parole decision-making in many European jurisdictions, which has been the subject of intense scrutiny accompanied by reforms that often focused on depoliticising and formalising the making of release decisions. Such reforms have been adopted as a result of domestic pressures as well as the influence of the supranational institutions of Europe. For example, the parole process in the UK has been transformed following ECtHR rulings, with decision-making becoming increasingly independent and judicial, resulting in a range of legal rights accruing to those affected by it.
      395
  • Publication
    The Death Penalty in Post-Independence Ireland
    (Taylor and Francis, 2012-03) ;
    The history of capital punishment in post-Independence Ireland has received scant scholarly attention. This essay is an attempt to set out what can be learned about the executed persons, the executioners, and the politicians whose inaction (not reforming the law) and actions (deciding against clemency) brought the two former groups together. The death penalty was deployed strategically against IRA members during the early 1940s as part of a package of legal measures designed to crush subversive activity, but more usually its targets were murderers whose acts had no wider ramifications. One notable aspect of the Irish arrangements was that when a prisoner was to be taken to the gallows an English hangman was always contracted to arrange the 'drop'. Reflecting popular antipathy towards the practice the Irish state was unable to find a willing executioner within its borders.
      3739Scopus© Citations 11
  • Publication
    Conclusion: Explaining coercive confinement in Ireland: Why was the past such a different place?
    (Manchester University Press, 2012-06) ;
    This book provides an overview of the incarceration of tens of thousands of men, women and children during the first fifty years of Irish independence. Psychiatric hospitals, mother and baby homes, Magdalen homes, Reformatory and Industrial schools, prisons and Borstal formed a network of institutions of coercive confinement that was integral to the emerging state. The book provides a wealth of contemporaneous accounts of what life was like within these austere and forbidding places as well as offering a compelling explanation for the longevity of the system and the reasons for its ultimate decline. While many accounts exist of individual institutions and the factors associated with their operation, this is the first attempt to provide a holistic account of the interlocking range of institutions that dominated the physical landscape and, in many ways, underpinned the rural economy. Highlighting the overlapping roles of church, state and family in the maintenance of these forms of social control, this book will appeal to those interested in understanding twentieth-century Ireland: in particular, historians, legal scholars, criminologists, sociologists and other social scientists. These arguments take on special importance as Irish society continues to grapple with the legacy of its extensive use of institutionalisation.
      2804
  • Publication
    A family affair? English Hangmen and a Dublin jail, 1923-54
    (University of St. Thomas. Center for Irish Studies, 2014-12) ;
    The genealogy of capital punishment in twentieth-century Ireland defies easy articulation, and several aspects of the practice appear especially perplexing in the absence of an appreciation of a precise historical context. It is puzzling, for instance, that Irish politicians couched arguments favoring the retention of capital punishment in terms of its perceived efficacy as a deterrent to potential subversives when the death penalty was imposed almost exclusively for non-political civilian murder. It is puzzling, too, that the taoisigh and ministers who were prepared to allow executions go ahead had not only been comrades with men executed during the revolutionary period, but in some cases, had themselves been sentenced to death. It is puzzling that the sanction was retained after Independence when one considers the "politicization" of capital punishment and the attendant public antipathy toward what was seen as an unfortunate colonial (and civil war) legacy; in the minds of many nationalists, hanging was nothing more than a manifestation of English tyranny. And, finally, it is puzzling that when the need arose to execute a condemned person in Ireland an English hangman was always contracted to arrange the "drop." This final puzzle may, however, be illuminated by a detailed examination of the men who discharged this grisly function.
      1527
  • Publication
    Crime and punishment in the Republic of Ireland: A country profile
    (Taylor and Francis, 2011-01)
    The colonial origins of the Irish criminal justice system can be seen its buildings, laws, procedures, and practices. When change occurs it is often driven by events rather than emerging from a deliberative process that draws on evidence and expertise. The murders, in the space of a fortnight in 1996, of a journalist and a police officer, led to heightened anxiety about crime and its consequences. This was accompanied by a toughening of the political mood that was translated into a commitment to more police and more prisons. At around the same time, and continuing for a decade, the Republic of Ireland experienced rapid social change, including significant inward migration and greatly increased prosperity. These trends impacted on police, prosecutors, and courts and put new pressures on the prison population. How these challenges are addressed – especially in the context of declining economic resources – will determine the shape of the criminal justice system in the years ahead.
      938
  • Publication
    Criminology, Bureaucracy and Unfinished Business
    (Oxford University Press, 2011-01-27)
    When exploring the interplay of criminology and policy the debate often revolves around the changing influence of the former on the direction of the latter. This debate generally occurs in countries where the discipline is firmly entrenched and the policy context is well understood. But what about when the criminal justice system operates in the absence of a sustained academic critique? How do things appear where criminology is in a fledgling state and where bureaucratic arrangements in respect of criminal justice have an unformed quality? What does the absence of criminology tell us about the possible impact of its presence?
      499
  • Publication
    Making progress with penal reform
    (Round Hall, 2013-07)
    Comments on recommendations by the Sub-Committee on Penal  Reform supporting a reversal of the expansionist approach to imprisonment in Ireland through: (1) the adoption of a decarceration strategy; (2) substituting community service for prison terms of less than six months for non-violent offences; (3) increasing the standard rate of remission; (4) provision of a modern legislative framework for all forms of early release; and (5) a rebalancing of the system, with greater use being made of open prison and all prisoners being held in decent conditions.
      547