Ms Maura Butler:

I thank the Chairman for the invitation. I also wish the Minister, the Lord Mayor and everyone else a good evening.

The Association for Criminal Justice Research and Development, ACJRD, is an organisation which has been involved in research and collaboration with members of the criminal justice community for quite a long time. We are in regular communication with more than 700 individuals who include staff from the main criminal justice agencies, related Departments, academics, students, members of the legal community and community and youth service providers whose work intersects with that of the criminal justice system. More than 250 of the people concerned are our members. It is important to say, however, that even though we have all of these Government agencies among our membership, the views expressed in our submission and today are those of the ACJRD in its independent capacity, not those of the ACJRD member organisations or their employers. It is my privilege to be the voluntary chairperson of the group.

In making our submission we made 25 recommendations. I am sure those present will be delighted to hear I will not attempt to go through all of them. It has been difficult to extrapolate those on which it would be best to focus. Suffice it to say we support what has been said. We have very much taken on board the 2007 research conducted by the National Crime Council and cited it in our submission. Similarly, we have made reference to the Midtown Community Court experience and that in north Liverpool. We see a lot that can be learned within the Irish jurisdiction on that basis.

The ACJRD has undertaken quite an amount of research on the Children Court and women ex-prisoners and runs conferences on various matters. The most recent conference was very much apropos of this discussion and the results will be launched this month. It was entitled, Preventable Harm: Criminal Justice, Communities and Civil Society. We have been having discussions since last October with the organisations involved and various working groups have expertise in various areas, including mental health, one of the areas we cited in the context of the submission. For purposes of this meeting, however, I will distil the information and say the expertise we have honed and presented in the context of the concept of restorative justice is extremely important given the community aspect of the proposed community courts. As an aside, if we go back to the 7th century in Ireland, the Brehon laws offered a community solution for community problems where everyone in the area came together and ensured restitution, as mentioned.

The collaboration within the membership of the ACJRD pulls together all of the agencies involved in the criminal justice system. We have found such collaboration to be an extraordinarily rich resource and would see the community court system as almost like an analogous implementation of that type of collaboration. As has been pointed out by my colleague from the United Kingdom, we must learn from the Liverpool experience. It is very important that we do so. I will focus on that point first. It is really important to ensure the aims and objectives of a community court are specifically laid out and that there is not too disparate a purpose given to the community court. I am open to correction, but in the Liverpool example I understand the judge was dealing with both summary and indictable matters, with both the trial process and sentencing. That is far too much and the community court system really ought to be focused on sentencing.

I do not have a citation, but it can be found. The generally accepted statistics are that when it comes to District Court business in Ireland, approximately 80% of those who come before it plead guilty. One would not think this when one hears media reports on the really bad cases. That being the case, potentially that amount of people could, in theory, be dealt with within a community court structure. The attractiveness of the structure would be that one would have all of the necessary services available. In an ideal world it would be great to have them all on the same premises in order that an accused person who has been dealt with could knock on the door of the mental health service and the Probation Service, for example, in the same building. Having them in close proximity might be more realistic from a resource perspective. Having a sentencing court only would be our recommendation.

It is obvious to state it is necessary to have legal representation available to anybody who comes before a community court. Such legal representation should not necessarily be confined to the actual process within the court but should be available to somebody who chooses to plead guilty for the purposes of going into the sentencing court. All the usual due process principles in the criminal justice system ought to apply. It is fair to say the criminal court system operates efficiently and is very advanced in some of the facilities available and that applies to the service provided, in particular, within the Irish Prison Service but also by the Probation Service.

The mental health aspect is very important. Research that the ACJRD has undertaken and conferences we have held indicate that a huge proportion of people who come before the criminal courts have a mental health difficulty.

That is a welfare issue. The issue of people being dealt with in a criminal justice context when they should be in a health care context must be the primary focus in any research done in preparing for this type of court case. Also, a person does not cease to be mentally unwell once a sentence has expired; therefore, some provision must be made for ongoing health services in circumstances in which the only reason the person is coming before the court is a breach.

We recommend that the community court be stand-alone and a pilot programme. We believe the goals of the community court should be cohesively designed and clearly stated. The design of an Irish community court should have a legislative provision mandating a review of the operation of the community court within a specific time period. Provision should be made for appropriate data collection for the review, having regard to the goals of the court. Steps should be taken to ensure that this data collection is implemented appropriately, if necessary requiring early commissioning of the review or consultation with the evaluators involved in that process. Notwithstanding the stand-alone nature of the court, when this review is carried out it should have regard to whether the community court experience can inform practices that are generally applicable in the District Court system. Community court business should be limited to sentencing only, and the community court should only hear the sentence matters which do not merit the imposition of an immediate custodial sentence.

Regarding support services, we indicate in our submission that these should include alcohol and drug addiction assessment and counselling. By way of an aside, alcohol addiction tends to have much more impact within a criminal justice context than is often recognised. When we discovered that we had a huge drug problem within our criminal justice system in the mid-1980s, the eye came off the ball in regard to alcohol addiction and how that can impact on many people who end up in court.

Other services could include education and literacy courses, pre-employment and other training programmes, family housing and other social services, parenting programmes, anger management courses and so on. Those people skills could possibly be given by the community in a mentor capacity.

Depending on where this development goes, the Association for Criminal Justice Research and Development, ACJRD, would be more than happy to facilitate any of the necessary research, collaboration or meetings that might be necessary to assist the process. I thank the Chairman for the opportunity.