Niall Ó Donnghaile (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister will be glad to hear that I do not think I will need to use my eight minutes either but I will put on record our position. I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important Bill. As has been said, this Bill essentially amends the legislation to activate a suspended sentence in the event of the commission of another offence by a person who is subject to a suspended sentence. This is necessary as a result of a decision by the High Court earlier this year. This Bill means that where a person is convicted of an offence during the term of his or her suspended sentence, he or she may be returned to the court which imposed the original suspended sentence to have that activated. Where the person is returned to the court, it will, unless it considers it unjust, activate the suspended sentence and the sentence will be served consecutively.

We support the Bill in so far as we believe that the constitutional matter that gave rise to the decision that required it needs to be rectified. However, we are concerned about compelling the court to sentence a person convicted to a consecutive sentence and believe that this is close to a form of mandatory sentence. As a result, we believe that this should be amended to allow the sentencing judge the flexibility to decide whether the sentence should be served concurrently or consecutively. Sinn Féin believes that suspended sentences should be used by the courts, where appropriate, as an alternative to custody. The use of suspended or conditional sentences should be placed on a statutory footing and consideration given to creating more specific guidelines regarding their use. We believe that the Minister should use this opportunity to look at sentencing as a whole. In particular, consideration should be given to introducing a legislative requirement, save for exceptional circumstances, for its use for the types of offenders currently sentenced to custody for a period of one year or less. Conditions imposed in respect of sentence suspension should be in all cases preventative as well as restorative, where possible and appropriate. We have a concern regarding the proposition that a person returned to serve an activated part of their suspended sentence may have to do so consecutively in respect of the other sentence. While we are in agreement that there must be a facility to have a sentence activated, we are unconvinced that removing flexibility from a judge regardless of context is necessarily the most appropriate way to achieve this.

While we have the opportunity, let me place on the record our concerns regarding mandatory sentences of a different nature as this is something that arises time and again in the course of our work here and is very often something that is proposed by other individuals believing that this is a mechanism to reduce crime. It has previously been proposed that mandatory consecutive sentences for certain specified bail offences be introduced. However, the Law Reform Commission was unequivocal in its finding in 2013 that it has not been illustrated that mandatory or presumptive sentences for repeat offending achieve their intended sentencing aims and, as a result, that these regimes are likely to reduce criminal conduct. The commission recommended that the use of mandatory or presumptive minimum sentences should not be extended to other forms of repeat offending. The strategic review of penal policy group was equally clear in its finding that there is concern as to the impact of presumptive minimum mandatory sentences on prisoner numbers as well as questions as to the extent to which these sentences have contributed. The Irish Penal Reform Trust also published a paper in 2013 on mandatory sentences which concluded that mandatory sentences were ineffective as a deterrent, gave rise to injustice and were not cost-effective. Given the lack of evidence that mandatory sentences reduce crime and the consensus of both law reform and penal policy experts that there should be no extension to existing presumptive schemes, there appears to be little rationale for the inclusion of such a provision. We support the Bill to allow the activation of suspended sentences, however, we believe that sentencing guidelines for the courts would be more appropriate than a mandatory consecutive sentence. We will allow the Bill to go forward but we wish to see our concerns addressed. Otherwise, we would need to re-evaluate our support for this Bill. At this stage, I am sure the Minister is coming here with an open ear and is certainly prepared to listen to some of these concerns.

Furthermore, it is our view that a conversation about the increasingly carceral nature of society is overdue. In most cases, prison does not work if the goal is to eradicate or deter crime. We have had prisons for hundreds of years and we still have crime. To quote Michel Foucault, "there is no glory in punishing."Clearly, in the sentencing guidelines it would have been better to take action State-wide and at local level to prevent crime from happening in the first place. What is necessary from the point of view of the Government, if it is serious about reducing crime levels, is treating violence and intimidation in the community as a public health concern, introducing evidence based drug laws, focusing on prevention and early interventions to address inequalities and systematically targeting investment in communities, while ensuring ex-offenders have access to secure employment and housing. In the absence of these initiatives, we will continue to tinker at the edges of actions that talk about building a better society rather than getting on with the business of doing it.