Seanad debates

Monday, 3 July 2006

Criminal Justice Bill 2004: Committee Stage.

 

8:00 pm

Photo of Jim WalshJim Walsh (Fianna Fail)

There was considerable debate on mandatory sentencing on Second Stage. I differ from Senator Cummins in believing that if the Oireachtas decides a particular crime merits a mandatory minimum sentence that is the sentence that should be given. I do not have any difficulty if judicial discretion is used in order to suspend a portion of it but that is preferable to a lower sentence. At the moment we might think an offence is of such gravity as to carry a mandatory minimum, not maximum, sentence of ten years. However, a judge could decide, having heard all the facts, that a person should only receive a sentence of seven years. That person may then receive 25% remission for good behaviour so will have served less than half of what we considered the mandatory sentence and that is wrong. That is wrong, since the minimum sentence should be that handed down. If the judge wishes to suspend one, two or three years to take account of co-operation or any other mitigating factor, that suspended sentence should still hang over the individual, who is then at least bound to good behaviour. Otherwise, he will have to spend the balance of the minimum sentence in prison as a consequence of recidivism.

We must be tougher in the message that we send out. I heard what the Minister said regarding the mandatory minimum sentence applying in only 16 of 76 cases. That figure of approximately 20% is far too low. If that is not the case, we Oireachtas Members must be passing the wrong legislation. It is one or the other, and we cannot both be right. I cannot believe that 80% of the time the judge feels, having heard the case, that a lesser sentence should apply.

It may not be possible to clarify the area in this Bill in which there is a great deal I would like to see enacted. Its many positive elements will be of assistance in tackling crime and, one hopes, controlling and deterring it. We should examine this area, however. We should not insert mandatory minimums unless we mean them. If that is so, the judge should not act as if he were wiser than the 226 people who made the decision in the first place. I have no difficulty with granting the judge discretion, but I feel strongly that it should be in the form of a suspended sentence rather than waiving the mandatory minimum.

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