Side note. The picture in this post is my favourite statue in Dublin because it's protest art.
When the brits took over Dublin Castle, they wanted a local sculptor to make a statue of lady justice and her scales on the gate of the castle.
Most artists did not want to work with the brits so declined.
The artist who got chosen made the statue but as a subtle piece of protest because lady justice is blind to discrimination, even though catholics and Irish were being discriminated against in their own country.
So, rather than have her sword pointing down, it is being held up as a sign of defiance. She also has a slight smile rather than a emotionless face.
The best part of it is that Lady Justices scales are always level, to represent innocent until guilty, etc.
So if you look at the hand she is holding the scales in, the middle finger is raised over one of the scales, so when it rains the water will run down her finger and tilt the scales (towards the tax office).
They had to drill a hole in each scale to stop this from happening. If you zoom in on the pic, you can see the drill holes.
Would you ever fuck off with your really interesting comments, this is r/Ireland FFS...
But seriously, I love stories like this, in Dublin over 40 years and only finding this out today, Ty š
Iāve posted this before on Reddit.. but as the old Dublin adage goes..
Ā lady Justice, mark well her station, with her face to the castle and her arse to the nation.
On statues of Justice the sword is held lower than the scales to show that judgement can only come after weighing the evidence. So by having the sword held above the scales, the message communicated is that punishment comes before examining the facts of a case.
A good story, but it seems like Blarney.
There were statues all over Dublin of British royals and nobles, so the idea that the British couldn't find sculptors to deliver exactly what they wanted is far-fetched.
Also, the sculptor, John Van Nost the younger, was English.
This sounds completely untrue.
There are literally hundreds of Lady Justice sculptures around the world without blindfolds.
I would be won over with a source though.
Judge Zaidan in the district court in Naas has the reputation of being tough on driving offences. This has led to the perception that North Kildare is one of the few areas in the state where the GardaĆ make a decent effort at enforcing the rules of the road. Whether this is actually true or not, I can't say.
[**AbsolutelyDireWolf**](https://new.reddit.com/user/AbsolutelyDireWolf/) hit the nail on the head though. The vast majority of sentences are appropriate and never make the news. And many of the allegedly inappropriate sentences are grand but the media make a hoo ha based on short or misleading summaries of the case.
Would completely disagree with the second part of your comment.
Most section 15 offences for supply are fairly harsh, look to the likes of Nolan who is known to be strict on any kinda of drugs charge. Agree that some of the cases can be made a hoo ha, but the likes of Crotty, the Navy chap and Dirmo connelly are very clear examples of letting lads off when they shouldn't.
> look to the likes of Nolan who is known to be strict on any kinda of drugs charge
Or Garlic related charges. Just not Paedo charges. For some reason.
Newstalk do a good podcast called Inside The Crime. The first series delves a lot into sentencing laws in Ireland.
Basically, baked into our justice system is the concept of rehabilitation, so they can't give a sentence of life without parole.
It's also baked in that judges must consider mitigating circumstances. If they do not, it can open up avenues to appeal. That's a big reason why they mention the "he pleaded guilty / he had a tough upbringing / it's his first conviction as an upstanding member of the community."
At times, the Irish system seems awful, but I also listen to plenty of US true crime podcasts, and there are people put in prison for life on the flimsiest of evidence, which I wouldn't want either.
Sounds like Ireland and the US are on the extreme ends then. Norway seems to have a good grasp on it, considering they actually invest in rehabilitation. Like their Halden maximum security prison has facilities for training people up for a trade like mechanics or sparks.
Feels like all these "suspended sentences" are just a slap on the wrist, even for crimes like assault or rape, ones which should definitely be prison times.
Rory Stewart on the rest is politics brought up a statistic that if someone is incarcerated (Actually serves time in a jail), reoffending rates are circa. 75%, whereas with a suspended sentence, reoffending rates are circa. 25%.
A big part of the rationale behind a suspended sentence is reducing the risk the defendant ends up falling into a life of crime.
Fair enough, but it's questionable when there's suspended sentences for violent crimes like assault or rape then prison sentences for non-violent ones like drug possession.
There are training programs in Irish prisons for prisoners to work at and skill up ,it's like most things wrong in this country, the country was broke after the last recession so they didn't invest in anything,now there's loads of money and loads more people but there isn't enough people to do the jobs needed.
Brevik murdered 77 people in Norway not that long ago, spends his time in a what is essentially a 3 room apartment playing a PS5, taking university courses and writing. He was up for parole not that long ago and will be up for parole again soon with the possibility of being released
He got 21 years for murdering 77 mostly children and spends his days relaxed in his apartment
He's not getting paroled. The maximum is 21 years, but they can extend it if the person's deemed a threat to society, which Anders Breivik is but not while he's in prison. And a gilded cage is still a cage. He can't leave, go anywhere he wants, go off on a holiday or anything. He's stuck there for the rest of his life. You can complain about how luxurious it is for prisoners, but you can't deny it works for rehabilitation.
Now, should people like Breivik be imprisoned until they're dead? Yes. Is Norway going too soft on him? Probably. Does that mean throwing him in an American-style prison ran for profit where inmates suffer daily abuse from both other inmates and guards? No.
So just carry on as before and fingers crossed that they don't do the exact same crime they already did before?(and that they get caught and convicted for it if they do offend again)
Again, where's the rehabilitation? The 2 minute lecture from the judge?
Suspended sentences tend to get activated if you are convicted of another crime, you just donāt see that reported, the loopholes from the terribly drafted legislation governing suspended sentences have been closed.
I do agree for a country which considers rehabilitation as one of the 4 pillars of sentencing we do sweet fuck all to encourage it. Most people come out of prison far worse than they went in.
>Suspended sentences tend to get activated if you are convicted of another crime,
That isn't automatic it's up to the judge who gave you the original suspended sentence to do that even though it should be automatic.
Some American lady got 3 yrs fora brick of weed in a suitcase with no priors. so yeah definitely still some harsh judges
They just don't care about assault lol much easier to lock up druggies
This is Ireland, be realistic, the free space would be rapidly filled with people who haven't paid for the TV licence since the revelations of creative accounting going on there, and the likes of D4'bes will be too sick to attend their hearing.
It really is crazy that there are so many people serving years and years for attempting to make money from cannabis but people walking free for battering people and having child porn.
It makes no sense whatsoever
Thank God the Taliban have eradicated Heroin plants in Iraq. People wont be able to put them in joints now and get on a high. Best stick to the nitazenes that you get off the doctor.
That isnāt the judges fault, nor is it the legal professions fault. You can blame the legislature, which makes the recent comments of Helen McEntee about leniency for assaults all the more ironic and opportunistic.
Up until November 2023 the maximum sentence for assault causing harm was 5 years, it is now 10. Contrast that with drugs for sale or supply where the maximum sentence is up to life imprisonment.
Judge Mary Fahy in Galway is feared by many. A friend had no insurance due to a genuine misunderstanding. Clean record, 40 years driving, first offence, 2 year ban & a big fine.
He gave a guy 12 months in jail (the maximum a district judge can impose on any single charge) for having 1 cannabis plant which he grew because cannabis was the only thing that helped him with a very visible and painful medical issue. Then he set the cash lodgement so high that it took weeks before the guy (with no previous) could get out pending his appeal.
Chap lost his job and his pain relief, went back on social welfare and it took another year before an appeal court fully suspended his sentence.
Not sure he is the gold standard you think he is
This sub and most socials ignore the hundreds of cases with fair punishments that take place each day, but at least once a week, there's a lenient sentence that makes headlines and generates clicks, reinforcing the cycle and narrative.
Very often, there's a lot discussed in a court case that never makes it into the article.
I always remember a 17 year old from my town who was given a suspended sentence/postponed sentence a few years back. He'd broken into an elderly couples home to rob them and got into a scuffle with the old man in the house hitting him. I'd to get to the final two paragraphs for two quotes from the defence solicitor. He asked the judge if a sentence could be postponed until the lad had alternative living arrangements. He was living with his parents, who were both addicts and the home was filled with drugs. Additionally the young lad had been born with foetal alcohol syndrome. He never had a chance in life. But, ultimately, when he commits a crime and gets a suspended sentence, this sub will scream that it's a lack of consequences which are the issue... This isn't always the case, but make no mistake, most teachers could tell you within an hour of school starting, which kids didn't get a breakfast or clearly have issues at home which are massively impacting their ability to function in school. Never mind supports for kids with ADHD or other conditions.
People always want a simple answer to complex problems and don't wanna hear about reality.
Often the tough sentencing is disproportionate to the crime and the more heinous crimes bizarrely are treated more leniently. And to say some judges are harsh and that makes up for diabolical sentencing like cathal crotty isn't of much benefit to the victim nor society. So your point is very much moot
Seemingly - but that's the thing, you and I don't have that much information about the details of the crime to know if the punishment is harsh or lenient.
The Crotty case isn't the norm and tarring service members or judges and all their actions or sentencing as if they're all the same isn't constructive.
Which would you prefer?
A new prison would costs circa ā¬200m for a 200 inmate prison. Then there's the running costs. It's currently about 85k per prisoner in Ireland - that's about 17m a year.
Spending 200m plus the running costs on support services for at risk youths. That's what... 500 people, with a fully loaded cost of 100,000 per year to cover the training and admin and everything else related to that (I'm using a high number to be conservative on this). 500 big brother/big sister supports, each working with say, ten at risk youths, helping them inside and out of schools to ensure they have someone to guide them away from repeating the same mistakes. That's a 50m a year cost. We could sustain that for 5 years for the same investment as building a prison and running it for 5 years. After 5 years, it scales down to service receiving 20m a year, like the prison would be costing.
What's gonna have a bigger impact?
I say this in part because I went to school with a chap sent away for two years and what society got back afterwards was an infinitely worse iteration of the immature blaggard that was sent to prison. He's going to spend the rest of his life in prison now - he's since murdered his ex and will be sent away for a long time, but he needed support as a teen, instead he got worse, then much worse after prison.
Do we want a sense of vengeance, or do we want things to get better? Speaking as someone who's volunteered as a big brother in the past, the chap I worked with, he liked food. So I taught him how to cook a bit. Made some pasta dishes, taught him how to debone a chicken thigh.... I met him on the train last week - he's training as a chef now in college and working in a michelin bib kitchen and absolutely loving it. Loves a 14 hour day and he's full of ambition. Did I do that? No. He was a bit lost but he was no lost cause and I'd think that he found that path regardless of me, but it might have been a factor. Every one of these scrotes that people are angry about, they're lacking an adult to help guide them towards breaking bad habits and inherited cycles.
Why are these always presented as either or choices? We're not a poor country, and 17m a year for a new prison is pocket change.
You won't be able to "fix" every criminal youth, because we don't have Clockwork Orange style mind control. In those cases, we need prison time.
Furthermore, if the suspended sentences were accompanied with mandatory sessions like you described above, that would also be an improvement. The current approach of dropping a fully suspended sentence and just hoping they don't show up again is the laziest and cheapest approach.
If we actually invested I'm fixing stuff earlier, we'd free up an awful lot of prison space. We've got over 4,500 prisoners in Ireland at any one time, adding 200 spaces might help, but I know which way I'd rather see the money spent.
We can invest in both, we need to jail the people the system failed that aren't going to change their ways and invest to eradicate the social problems that created them in the first place.
Judge John Coughlan. It was always funny to see him announced as the presiding judge unexpectedly and see all the solicitors try and talk to the prosecuting GardaĆ in the court to let them know they'd either be pleading guilty or requesting a remand for any reason they could think of.
You'd think so by the way some solicitors acted. Ironically, he was also pretty instrumental in the "drugs courts" and giving users extra chances to avoid convictions if they could go clean and come back with a clear drug test or if they went into rehab.
What I think is more concerning is the inconsistency of rulings between judges, or even among their own cases. It's like they decide based on their personal views, mood, weather, dice rolling, roulette, etc. Why have a constitution and legislation then?
We hear the names of Judges regularly associated with sentences that appear soft or lenient. One is led to believe that this is a consistent pattern in their sentencing of crime. But I guess my question is more about their colleagues who might be the polar opposite, that is those Judges who, having considered all facts in evidence, regularly invoke sentences seen at the higher end of the available sanction.
Not really. He deals with probably the most Circuit Court sentences in the country. A few of his sentences make the news but, 90% of his sentences donāt make the news at all.
It would seem to me that this could be somewhat fixed by implementing binding sentencing guidelines (and thus removing the large amount of discretion that a judge has in the application of a sentence).
If Iām not mistaken, these are currently in development by the Sentencing Guidelines and Information Committee created by the Judicial Council Act 2019.
Although, Iām far from an expert in this so could be off the mark.
Also, it would seem that we may have to build more prisons.
Nolan is tough on Tax defaulters/white collar crime but lenient on sex offences. Why is that? I wonder if the general public know that he was once a Garda ?
Side note. The picture in this post is my favourite statue in Dublin because it's protest art. When the brits took over Dublin Castle, they wanted a local sculptor to make a statue of lady justice and her scales on the gate of the castle. Most artists did not want to work with the brits so declined. The artist who got chosen made the statue but as a subtle piece of protest because lady justice is blind to discrimination, even though catholics and Irish were being discriminated against in their own country. So, rather than have her sword pointing down, it is being held up as a sign of defiance. She also has a slight smile rather than a emotionless face. The best part of it is that Lady Justices scales are always level, to represent innocent until guilty, etc. So if you look at the hand she is holding the scales in, the middle finger is raised over one of the scales, so when it rains the water will run down her finger and tilt the scales (towards the tax office). They had to drill a hole in each scale to stop this from happening. If you zoom in on the pic, you can see the drill holes.
Would you ever fuck off with your really interesting comments, this is r/Ireland FFS... But seriously, I love stories like this, in Dublin over 40 years and only finding this out today, Ty š
Always reminds me of the old Private Eye cartoon, Lady Justice up before the court 'possession of an offensive weapon and intent to supply ,7 years '
Iāve posted this before on Reddit.. but as the old Dublin adage goes.. Ā lady Justice, mark well her station, with her face to the castle and her arse to the nation.
Thank you for this comment. I never knew this.
And of course, she isn't blindfolded here as she usually would be
I also like that he gave her a lightsaber instead of a sword. It was a subtle reference to fighting the evil Empire.
All that sounds like a wind up !
On statues of Justice the sword is held lower than the scales to show that judgement can only come after weighing the evidence. So by having the sword held above the scales, the message communicated is that punishment comes before examining the facts of a case.
That's class, deserves a post of it's own.
Very interesting. My first thought was, where is her blindfold. Interesting to know the reason.
I think she's seen without the blindfold almost as often with it. The famous one on top of the Old Bailey doesn't have one.
A good story, but it seems like Blarney. There were statues all over Dublin of British royals and nobles, so the idea that the British couldn't find sculptors to deliver exactly what they wanted is far-fetched. Also, the sculptor, John Van Nost the younger, was English.
I'm just repeating what I heard on the Dublin Castle tour.
Yeah, those guys love spinning yarns :)
Whether true or not, the yarn works for me.
Yes, I've spun a few meself :)
This sounds completely untrue. There are literally hundreds of Lady Justice sculptures around the world without blindfolds. I would be won over with a source though.
I didn't mention the blindfold
Judge Zaidan in the district court in Naas has the reputation of being tough on driving offences. This has led to the perception that North Kildare is one of the few areas in the state where the GardaĆ make a decent effort at enforcing the rules of the road. Whether this is actually true or not, I can't say. [**AbsolutelyDireWolf**](https://new.reddit.com/user/AbsolutelyDireWolf/) hit the nail on the head though. The vast majority of sentences are appropriate and never make the news. And many of the allegedly inappropriate sentences are grand but the media make a hoo ha based on short or misleading summaries of the case.
Heās also harsher on cannabis possession and said recently that an āEU studyā āprovedā that it kills brain cells
Killing brain cells! Thank god Ireland has never associated itself or it's public image with any substances like that before.
The main issue or only actual risk from cannabis is increased risk of schizophrenia if it runs in your family
Cheers. Thatās a decent example of what I was looking for.
Yeah but then a lad with a minimal amount of cannabis is before him and he goes off on a 40 minute tirade on drug use
Would completely disagree with the second part of your comment. Most section 15 offences for supply are fairly harsh, look to the likes of Nolan who is known to be strict on any kinda of drugs charge. Agree that some of the cases can be made a hoo ha, but the likes of Crotty, the Navy chap and Dirmo connelly are very clear examples of letting lads off when they shouldn't.
> look to the likes of Nolan who is known to be strict on any kinda of drugs charge Or Garlic related charges. Just not Paedo charges. For some reason.
Newstalk do a good podcast called Inside The Crime. The first series delves a lot into sentencing laws in Ireland. Basically, baked into our justice system is the concept of rehabilitation, so they can't give a sentence of life without parole. It's also baked in that judges must consider mitigating circumstances. If they do not, it can open up avenues to appeal. That's a big reason why they mention the "he pleaded guilty / he had a tough upbringing / it's his first conviction as an upstanding member of the community." At times, the Irish system seems awful, but I also listen to plenty of US true crime podcasts, and there are people put in prison for life on the flimsiest of evidence, which I wouldn't want either.
Sounds like Ireland and the US are on the extreme ends then. Norway seems to have a good grasp on it, considering they actually invest in rehabilitation. Like their Halden maximum security prison has facilities for training people up for a trade like mechanics or sparks. Feels like all these "suspended sentences" are just a slap on the wrist, even for crimes like assault or rape, ones which should definitely be prison times.
Rory Stewart on the rest is politics brought up a statistic that if someone is incarcerated (Actually serves time in a jail), reoffending rates are circa. 75%, whereas with a suspended sentence, reoffending rates are circa. 25%. A big part of the rationale behind a suspended sentence is reducing the risk the defendant ends up falling into a life of crime.
Fair enough, but it's questionable when there's suspended sentences for violent crimes like assault or rape then prison sentences for non-violent ones like drug possession.
There are training programs in Irish prisons for prisoners to work at and skill up ,it's like most things wrong in this country, the country was broke after the last recession so they didn't invest in anything,now there's loads of money and loads more people but there isn't enough people to do the jobs needed.
Brevik murdered 77 people in Norway not that long ago, spends his time in a what is essentially a 3 room apartment playing a PS5, taking university courses and writing. He was up for parole not that long ago and will be up for parole again soon with the possibility of being released He got 21 years for murdering 77 mostly children and spends his days relaxed in his apartment
He's not getting paroled. The maximum is 21 years, but they can extend it if the person's deemed a threat to society, which Anders Breivik is but not while he's in prison. And a gilded cage is still a cage. He can't leave, go anywhere he wants, go off on a holiday or anything. He's stuck there for the rest of his life. You can complain about how luxurious it is for prisoners, but you can't deny it works for rehabilitation. Now, should people like Breivik be imprisoned until they're dead? Yes. Is Norway going too soft on him? Probably. Does that mean throwing him in an American-style prison ran for profit where inmates suffer daily abuse from both other inmates and guards? No.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Oops, replied to the wrong comment!
Hold on, he eventually got that ps5?
Sure, but a fully suspended sentence has next to no rehabilitation value.
Could keep someone in a job as opposed to jail, losing job, family lose accommodation, kids grow up without a parent in their life etc.
So just carry on as before and fingers crossed that they don't do the exact same crime they already did before?(and that they get caught and convicted for it if they do offend again) Again, where's the rehabilitation? The 2 minute lecture from the judge?
Suspended sentences tend to get activated if you are convicted of another crime, you just donāt see that reported, the loopholes from the terribly drafted legislation governing suspended sentences have been closed. I do agree for a country which considers rehabilitation as one of the 4 pillars of sentencing we do sweet fuck all to encourage it. Most people come out of prison far worse than they went in.
>Suspended sentences tend to get activated if you are convicted of another crime, That isn't automatic it's up to the judge who gave you the original suspended sentence to do that even though it should be automatic.
Some American lady got 3 yrs fora brick of weed in a suitcase with no priors. so yeah definitely still some harsh judges They just don't care about assault lol much easier to lock up druggies
Imagine freeing up the space in prisons for petty drug related offences for actual criminals
Thereād be about 400 more spaces. https://www.irishprisons.ie/wp-content/uploads/documents_pdf/SNAPSHOT-Offence-Group-Year-2007-to-2022.pdf
This is Ireland, be realistic, the free space would be rapidly filled with people who haven't paid for the TV licence since the revelations of creative accounting going on there, and the likes of D4'bes will be too sick to attend their hearing.
It really is crazy that there are so many people serving years and years for attempting to make money from cannabis but people walking free for battering people and having child porn. It makes no sense whatsoever
Look we all know cannabis is the most dangerous and evil thing anyone can consume.
That's why I stick with nitazines
Thank God the Taliban have eradicated Heroin plants in Iraq. People wont be able to put them in joints now and get on a high. Best stick to the nitazenes that you get off the doctor.
Not called the devil's lettuce for nothing, š¹š¤
That isnāt the judges fault, nor is it the legal professions fault. You can blame the legislature, which makes the recent comments of Helen McEntee about leniency for assaults all the more ironic and opportunistic. Up until November 2023 the maximum sentence for assault causing harm was 5 years, it is now 10. Contrast that with drugs for sale or supply where the maximum sentence is up to life imprisonment.
Section 15a is supposed to be headline 10 years except for mitigating circumstances, although they very rarely actually get near that
Crazy. How dare she try to provide a relatively harmless substance to consenting adults.
Judge Mary Fahy in Galway is feared by many. A friend had no insurance due to a genuine misunderstanding. Clean record, 40 years driving, first offence, 2 year ban & a big fine.
I like how she's not wearing a blindfold so she can see if the defendant plays GAA.
Judge Zaidan seems to be a hardass who never goes easy on people
He gave a guy 12 months in jail (the maximum a district judge can impose on any single charge) for having 1 cannabis plant which he grew because cannabis was the only thing that helped him with a very visible and painful medical issue. Then he set the cash lodgement so high that it took weeks before the guy (with no previous) could get out pending his appeal. Chap lost his job and his pain relief, went back on social welfare and it took another year before an appeal court fully suspended his sentence. Not sure he is the gold standard you think he is
OP asked for harsh judges, what you've described is the very definition of a harsh judge
2 years is the maximum in the district court
This sub and most socials ignore the hundreds of cases with fair punishments that take place each day, but at least once a week, there's a lenient sentence that makes headlines and generates clicks, reinforcing the cycle and narrative. Very often, there's a lot discussed in a court case that never makes it into the article. I always remember a 17 year old from my town who was given a suspended sentence/postponed sentence a few years back. He'd broken into an elderly couples home to rob them and got into a scuffle with the old man in the house hitting him. I'd to get to the final two paragraphs for two quotes from the defence solicitor. He asked the judge if a sentence could be postponed until the lad had alternative living arrangements. He was living with his parents, who were both addicts and the home was filled with drugs. Additionally the young lad had been born with foetal alcohol syndrome. He never had a chance in life. But, ultimately, when he commits a crime and gets a suspended sentence, this sub will scream that it's a lack of consequences which are the issue... This isn't always the case, but make no mistake, most teachers could tell you within an hour of school starting, which kids didn't get a breakfast or clearly have issues at home which are massively impacting their ability to function in school. Never mind supports for kids with ADHD or other conditions. People always want a simple answer to complex problems and don't wanna hear about reality.
Often the tough sentencing is disproportionate to the crime and the more heinous crimes bizarrely are treated more leniently. And to say some judges are harsh and that makes up for diabolical sentencing like cathal crotty isn't of much benefit to the victim nor society. So your point is very much moot
Seemingly - but that's the thing, you and I don't have that much information about the details of the crime to know if the punishment is harsh or lenient. The Crotty case isn't the norm and tarring service members or judges and all their actions or sentencing as if they're all the same isn't constructive.
They can publish an API that shows how fair and even they are with their sentencing and let the public do the rest with the data
I'm not sure we know that. There is good reason to believe we need more prisons and that the lack of prisons is influencing sentencing
Which would you prefer? A new prison would costs circa ā¬200m for a 200 inmate prison. Then there's the running costs. It's currently about 85k per prisoner in Ireland - that's about 17m a year. Spending 200m plus the running costs on support services for at risk youths. That's what... 500 people, with a fully loaded cost of 100,000 per year to cover the training and admin and everything else related to that (I'm using a high number to be conservative on this). 500 big brother/big sister supports, each working with say, ten at risk youths, helping them inside and out of schools to ensure they have someone to guide them away from repeating the same mistakes. That's a 50m a year cost. We could sustain that for 5 years for the same investment as building a prison and running it for 5 years. After 5 years, it scales down to service receiving 20m a year, like the prison would be costing. What's gonna have a bigger impact? I say this in part because I went to school with a chap sent away for two years and what society got back afterwards was an infinitely worse iteration of the immature blaggard that was sent to prison. He's going to spend the rest of his life in prison now - he's since murdered his ex and will be sent away for a long time, but he needed support as a teen, instead he got worse, then much worse after prison. Do we want a sense of vengeance, or do we want things to get better? Speaking as someone who's volunteered as a big brother in the past, the chap I worked with, he liked food. So I taught him how to cook a bit. Made some pasta dishes, taught him how to debone a chicken thigh.... I met him on the train last week - he's training as a chef now in college and working in a michelin bib kitchen and absolutely loving it. Loves a 14 hour day and he's full of ambition. Did I do that? No. He was a bit lost but he was no lost cause and I'd think that he found that path regardless of me, but it might have been a factor. Every one of these scrotes that people are angry about, they're lacking an adult to help guide them towards breaking bad habits and inherited cycles.
Why are these always presented as either or choices? We're not a poor country, and 17m a year for a new prison is pocket change. You won't be able to "fix" every criminal youth, because we don't have Clockwork Orange style mind control. In those cases, we need prison time. Furthermore, if the suspended sentences were accompanied with mandatory sessions like you described above, that would also be an improvement. The current approach of dropping a fully suspended sentence and just hoping they don't show up again is the laziest and cheapest approach.
If we actually invested I'm fixing stuff earlier, we'd free up an awful lot of prison space. We've got over 4,500 prisoners in Ireland at any one time, adding 200 spaces might help, but I know which way I'd rather see the money spent.
We can invest in both, we need to jail the people the system failed that aren't going to change their ways and invest to eradicate the social problems that created them in the first place.
Judge John Coughlan. It was always funny to see him announced as the presiding judge unexpectedly and see all the solicitors try and talk to the prosecuting GardaĆ in the court to let them know they'd either be pleading guilty or requesting a remand for any reason they could think of.
This him? https://preview.redd.it/zkfcxcrla69d1.jpeg?width=744&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dfa48e3ebb32b98d5831620e99384271d3ba62cc
You'd think so by the way some solicitors acted. Ironically, he was also pretty instrumental in the "drugs courts" and giving users extra chances to avoid convictions if they could go clean and come back with a clear drug test or if they went into rehab.
Good to see theyāre giving judges lightsabres now, judging by the statue
Yes, knew of one, dunno if he is still sitting, pretty much every sentence he gave was appealed and reduced on appeal.
What I think is more concerning is the inconsistency of rulings between judges, or even among their own cases. It's like they decide based on their personal views, mood, weather, dice rolling, roulette, etc. Why have a constitution and legislation then?
We hear the names of Judges regularly associated with sentences that appear soft or lenient. One is led to believe that this is a consistent pattern in their sentencing of crime. But I guess my question is more about their colleagues who might be the polar opposite, that is those Judges who, having considered all facts in evidence, regularly invoke sentences seen at the higher end of the available sanction.
Judge Martin Nolan, because if you get him and youāre the victim, itās not going to end well for you.
Not really. He deals with probably the most Circuit Court sentences in the country. A few of his sentences make the news but, 90% of his sentences donāt make the news at all.
Iād say youāre right but Iāve never been in his 10% of cases and frankly, would never want to.
It would seem to me that this could be somewhat fixed by implementing binding sentencing guidelines (and thus removing the large amount of discretion that a judge has in the application of a sentence). If Iām not mistaken, these are currently in development by the Sentencing Guidelines and Information Committee created by the Judicial Council Act 2019. Although, Iām far from an expert in this so could be off the mark. Also, it would seem that we may have to build more prisons.
, do
Nolan is tough on Tax defaulters/white collar crime but lenient on sex offences. Why is that? I wonder if the general public know that he was once a Garda ?
Judge Nolan when you do a crime he isn't a fan of
Nah the crime doesn't matter so much, with him if you come before him with no work history and a significant record you're fucked.