Veteran journalist John McManus took to the pages of the Irish Times yesterday to decry an idea floated by the Minister for Justice.
If you missed what that idea was, then a brief summary: Jim O’Callaghan says he is considering creating a public record of sex offenders, specifically those with convictions for rape or serious sexual assault.
The idea is fairly simple: If you are a woman and thus a prospective romantic partner, or indeed if you are a prospective employer, you should be able to check whether the person you are about to enter a long term relationship with is a danger to your personal safety, or indeed a danger to your reputation or the safety of others you have a duty of care to.
Unspoken, the idea is presumably also to create an additional layer of deterrence in a country not exactly known for punitive criminal sentencing. Having your name up in lights as a convicted rapist on a publicly available database might make some men re-consider their sexual aggressiveness.
John McManus, however, making a fair argument, thinks this is a terrible idea because of the potential for vigilantism:
This somewhat outlandish idea raises the prospect of vigilantes waiting by their computers for the quarterly sex offenders list to drop on the Government website, in much the same way that business journalists eagerly anticipate the tax defaulters list.
However, rather than write up a story, they are more likely to go around the local sex offender’s house and video themselves beating them up before posting it on social media. Given the mileage they have got out of “unvetted males of military age”, it is terrifying to think where this might end up…..
…..The UK study pointed out that a publicly accessible database – such as those kept in the US – can have unintended and negative consequences, including driving offenders underground, making it harder for the authorities to keep tabs on them. Likewise, many sex offenders register as homeless to evade monitoring.
It may not have been intentional, but I am struck by both the classism and journalistic supremacy set out in McManus’s argument: Responsible middle class business journalists can be trusted with information, but the general public cannot be. Hand the public basic information, the argument goes, and goodness knows what they might do with it. Social order itself might break down.
To understand this argument is – and McManus is far from the only offender – to understand the mentality of much of the Irish chattering classes, who tend towards the view that the best way to keep the Irish public in line is to carefully manage their information diet. Tell them too much about what happens in their own country, and there could be disastrous consequences.
That said, we should not pretend that vigilantism, especially towards sex offenders, is not a potential problem. A few years ago, I vividly recall a mass panic in an Irish town when facebook rumours about the alleged re-location of an infamous sex offender circulated online, despite those rumours being nonsense.
But even at that: Part of living in a society is to accept that rights come with responsibilities, and that laws exist to protect everyone. Attacking somebody physically is assault, whether that person is an elderly pensioner or a convicted sex offender. The solution to vigilantism is not to keep the public in the dark – the solution is to severely punish those who engage in vigilantism.
In the meantime, the rest of us have the fundamental right to know who we share a society with. For some years now, the Government’s line has been “you have no veto over who lives near you”. But surely, you at least have a right to know who lives near you?
Further, the strong societal stigma against sex offenders is a good thing. It is to be encouraged, not managed. Social stigmas are one way that a society organically regulates itself and discourages negative behaviours. Subjecting wrongdoers to social stigmas is therefore essential to the maintenance of a coherent society. If Jim O’Callaghan wishes to name and shame sex offenders, then Jim O’Callaghan’s instincts are to be applauded.
Frankly, we’re not nearly brutal enough with the social stigmas as things stand, in part because stigma itself has become a bad word. Are we a better or a worse society because we exclude from our ranks those who have harmed one of us in such a brutal and invasive way? Does that make us more, or less moral? My answer is that to do so makes us a better society, and a safer society. Social stigma is an act of compassion, directed at those who have been wronged. It can be mis-used, certainly, when directed at unmarried mothers or perfectly law-abiding gay people, but the mis-use of a tool does not make the tool itself redundant.
As Sarah and I discuss on this week’s podcast, Ireland has a serious and under-stated problem with sex offending. If listing the names of offenders can add a layer of deterrence to that conduct, then it is to be welcomed. And if it must be opposed, it should be opposed on stronger grounds than “the public cannot be trusted”.