According to the Social Democrats, the problem of prison overcrowding cannot be solved just by increasing capacity in Irish jails. During a recent appearance on RTE, newly elected Soc Dems TD for Dublin Rathdown, Sinead Gibney, called for a boost in funding for community overreach, community policing, and a renewed emphasis on rehabilitation.
“Absolutely, custodial sentences have a place,” Deputy Gibney said, “But so too do community outreach programmes, probationary programmes, diversionary programmes of all sorts, and so too does investment in our communities that are hugely deprived.”
“We need to look at people being able to serve their sentence while remaining in the community,” Gibney said. She also suggested that prisoners were being “deprived of certain rights” – while calling for more funding for open prisons.
So, what exactly is the argument? That we should just let dangerous, violent criminals roam the streets purely because we want to feel good about our compassionate support for rehabilitation.
It’s not the first time that public representatives have pushed back against long-in-the-pipieline government plans for prison expansion. In April, Gibney’s colleague Garry Gannon TD joined with Labour leader Ivana Bacik and Senator Lynn Ruane in signing a letter which opposed prison extension plans.
As reported by Irish Legal News, the letter featured in the Irish Times, states: “Contrary to what is often assumed and the rhetoric we see in public debates, imprisonment is not an effective way of preventing or reducing crime.”
The letter calls for Ireland to “move on from its addiction to short prison sentences” and to resolve offences “outside of court wherever possible”, while highlighting a lack of investment in the areas of victim support, restorative justice, social, youth and community work, addiction and poverty reduction.
Penal policies that rely on imprisonment will either have no effect or make us less safe, was the just of the letter.
I find it, frankly, incredible that anyone, let alone some of the people we voted into our national parliament to represent us, could suggest that locking up criminals actually makes us less safe. There are too many examples to count where individuals who should have been in jail committed the most heinous crimes because they were allowed to roam free.
One case in point is the jailing of a man this week for raping and brutally attacking a woman after climbing in her bedroom window. He was sentenced to 15 years for raping, stabbing and beating a total stranger after he broke into her home while she slept.
I have no issue with the sentence – but what we should have issue with, especially in the context of a debate around shorter jail terms, is the fact he had been released from prison just ten days beforehand.
Edmund O’Sullivan (32) was jailed on Tuesday for 15 years with a post release supervision order of eight years.
According to the Irish Times, Mr Justice Paul McDermott, noted that partly suspended sentences previously failed to ensure any change in O’Sullivan’s behaviour and said it was of vital importance he is not left at large and unsupervised in society which could lead to exposing “some future victim to a similar occurrence”.
O’Sullivan had been serving a three-year sentence with the final six months suspended for stabbing another woman in her apartment in 2022. He had been released into the general public – even though he had 108 previous convictions, four of which are for assaults on women.
“The judge noted from the woman’s victim impact statement she “believed with every fibre in her being that if she had not fought back she would not be here today but she said the cost of surviving has been immense.”
In her victim impact statement the young woman, who was described in court as exceptionally traumatised, outlined how she continues to fight to rebuild her life but part of her has been irrevocably changed.
“I did nothing to deserve this, but I was left bloodied, broken and violated,” she told the court.
She said she does not believe for one minute that O’Sullivan regrets his actions and is only sorry he was caught. She said she cannot stress enough that O’Sullivan is “a danger to society”.
The woman said she prays justice is served not just for herself but for the safety of other women he might seek to harm.
She outlined how she had fought for her life after awaking to find a scissors at her neck and a man shouting at her to have sex. She said the image was burned into her mind and plays over in her head.
The court heard O’Sullivan stabbed her repeatedly to her face, head and arm and the woman also sustained puncture wounds to her hands.
She said the scars she has been left with are a constant reminder of how close she came to dying.
Why was this man released? – and why did he only serve two and half years in prison for stabbing a woman?
He was released to stab and rape another innocent woman repeatedly, and she is lucky to be alive. But, what, we’re expected to believe the Social Democrats when they preach to the public that we are all being too harsh? That everyone just needs love and compassion?
There is a naivety propped up by a social justice gospel that ignores the fact that some individuals are evil, and dangerous, and do not want to change. That some people simply will not change. Innocent taxpayers in our country need to be protected from people like that, not the other way around.
How do you possibly reconcile a story like that with a narrative that imprisonment is not an effective way of preventing crime? That, as argued in the letter published in the Irish Times, increasing sentence severity does not lead to more deterrence?
The reality is that a man like O’Sullivan should never have been released from prison early. It is shameful that he was – and what is even more ridiculous is the way in which campaigners and politicians seem ready to jump at an opportunity to give someone like that leniency in the name of social justice, at the very expense of victims.
There was also the case which went through the courts in December which saw a convicted rapist plead guilty to the harassment of three female journalists from the Sunday World. Mark McAnaw (52) pleaded guilty at Dublin District Court to the harassment of Nicola Tallant, Amanda Brunker and Deirdre Reynolds on various dates in August 2023.
Judge Martin Nolan ordered the preparation of victim impact statements.
McAnaw, who will be sentenced next month, has a number of previous convictions and was jailed for nine years for raping a foreign student in Donegal in October 2010. In 2012, he was convicted of orally raping and sexually assaulting the student. He also has a 1989 conviction for kidnapping and convictions for assaults causing actual bodily harm.
In April 2018, he had gone on a date with a woman and days afterwards, had attacked her in her home – which he forced his way into – armed with a large kitchen knife. McAnaw had been given an eight year and four-month sentence for the crime, but the final 16 months of the sentence had been suspended when he was placed under the supervision of the Probation Services.
Are glass-half-full campaigners and politicians really telling us that people like McAnaw and O’Sullivan are worthy of our second chances? Do they truly, genuinely believe that dangerous individuals like this can change their ways with a little bit of community support and engagement?
We all know that’s ludicrous. Somewhere along the line, we have decided that someone with 108 previous convictions isn’t dangerous, and that it’s society and our “rhetoric” that is the problem.
Why do we have prisons at all, if the point isn’t to keep people who are dangerous away from the rest of us? Some people are plainly a threat to society, and a ‘be kind’ mantra is not going to work. It seems that in Ireland, we’ve forgotten how to do the most basic of things – like locking up criminals. To suggest that the answer to prison overcrowding is releasing violent and dangerous people into society is a basic systems failure. It will only make us all less safe, and it cannot be tolerated.