Eoghan Harris (Independent)

When criminal justice issues are debated they are dominated by lawyers but it might not be a bad thing to hear more voices from the ordinary, non-legal side of the community. One of the reasons for the popular success of movies that deal with policemen who break the rules such as "Dirty Harry" is that the public sees the heroes carrying out justice as distinct from law. The public feels that we get a lot of law but very little justice. I am not against the rule of law. "Dirty Harry" is a tribute to the rule of law because when the hero stands over a guy on the ground with a gun he says to him "Do you feel lucky, Punk?" If he was an Iranian or Syrian policeman he would just pull the trigger but he does not do that because he is restrained by the Western jurisprudential, criminal, legal system that goes back to Grotius. "Dirty Harry" is about law. I am in favour of law but I am also in favour of justice.

This Bill is a very thin piece of Elastoplast on a large wound. No Bill or response by the Government has been adequate. The criminal gangs are a sui generis and a new thing in Ireland because they are based upon the delinquency created by the armed struggle of the Provisional IRA and the disrespect for human life is geometrical whereas the response of the community has been arithmetical to it.

I believe in a system of proactively searching out and tracking down the criminal gangs. Therefore, I believe in a system of investigating magistrates who are part of the Executive arm of Government but who, because they are lawyers, may not frighten the civil liberties lobby too much. It would be far better if, under section 12 of the Bill, instead of a High Court judge an investigative magistrate would take responsibility for surveillance and report back to a High Court judge.

I am glad that under section 15 there is not a petty fogging refusal to admit matters on small minor technicalities but that the general public good is taken into account. Having said that this Bill, like all others I have read in recent years, is inadequate for the level of crime that exists. I believe in two things when dealing with the new kind of criminal gangs. I believe in the investigative magistrates of the Italian model and I believe in internment where the State acts in loco parentis, that is selective interment for the sake of the criminals.

In a place like Limerick or many parts of Ireland, the rise of these feral gangs of young people - these Lord of the Flies scenarios - point out to us the inadequacy of the old criminal justice system which says that one person committed a crime and that person is fined, brought to court or jailed. That is not true because now the criminal gang, like the Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland, is deeply intertwined and cross-stitched with the community. Short of lifting out entire sections of that community for intensive periods of rehabilitation I do not see any real means of dealing with it.

Modern prisons should be created where entire families would be lifted and subjected to intensive social rehabilitation by the State. This is so difficult now because of the Ryan report, which has put a cloud over all efforts by the State to act in loco parentis at the very time we most need it to deal with these Lord of the Flies gangs of feral kids parading through Limerick. Everybody who has ever been to Dublin city centre has been mobbed by gangs of kids and it is a frightening thing because it is so unnatural.

Where the parents have failed and where the community is supporting this delinquent structure where older criminals are corrupting youth what answer is there in the long run? How can individual prosecutions handle that? This is where the non-legal mind comes in to play. Lawyers deal with case history, precedents and past performances. There is a new kind of criminal abroad. The Bill is a thin bandage on the wound, fair enough. I have nothing against it and I am for it in so far as it goes but it does not go far enough. We need to examine the entire criminal justice system from the view of the public, not so much previous case law but how we go about rooting out these serious quasi-military criminal gangs which operate like the Provisional IRA on quasi-political interventions and the creation of social structures to sustain them. That requires a mixture of political, legal and social interventions by the State for which we have no provisions at present. I do not expect any Minister to answer on the basis of this Bill the type of questions I am putting.

I am glad the Bill has the shadow of Senator Regan's work; imitation is the highest form of flattery.