The seven deadly crises

Paul O'Mahoney is no outsider. Formerly a research psychologist with the Department of Justice and author of a number of influential reports for it, he is no stranger to the 26-County justice system as seen from its command centre. So when O'Mahoney finds seven aspects of the system worthy of the label ``crisis'', it's worth a look-see to find out what he's talking about.

Surprise, surprise! He's talking about drugs and politicians, and politicians and the media, and prisons and civil servants, and sex and sexuality, and violence and the Gardai. And it's worth a read.

There's an explanation and a lot of the details of why the crime system is in a state of chassis. There's a scathing critique of both the prison system and the Garda Síochána. There's a thorough account of the manufactured crime fears of very recent years.

O'Mahoney bemoans the loss of hard-won civil liberties under the relentless onslaught of the hardline `crime fighters'. He believes there is neither the political nor ideological leadership present to counter this unthinking, cosmetic approach to crime. He describes a ``feeding frenzy'' between media and politicians on crime in a vortex where public opinion and telepolls lead and political opinion follows.

He criticises several state agencies over their drug policies and argues the best way forward would be a situation where drug use is controlled by means other than the law and self-destructive addictions are prevented by tackling their root causes.

The Garda, he contends, have lost their tradition of community service and their ranks are full of self-serving, whingeing and power-hungry elements. The public service contains huge black holes when it comes to accountability and traceable decision-making, if decisions are made at all. Golden circles exist in the establishment which stick up for each other and for the status quo.

All good stuff. O'Mahoney is unmissable if you want to read how bad things are. But if you already have an inkling and want to chew on something that's not coming from an internal upset, you'll be left on the brink of starvation. The approach is dominated by consideration of the view from the Department of Justice's top floor. So much so that the community responses to drug addiction and to drug dealing merit only a few lines. The return to community responses to crime is neglected and the debate about community policing is given no ground. There is no reminder that the crises may be seven and they may be deep, but the Department of Justice and its attached institutions are not the only bodies capable of changing things.

In his critique of the penal system, O'Mahoney notes that the 26 Counties has a higher tendency than other EU states to commit members of its population to prison. The effect of the ongoing conflict with the British state gets a mere paragraph as a `probable' influence on the expansion in prison places. The avoidance of the huge significance of the war on 26-County criminal justice policy is striking and where it is briefly alluded to, the use of `terrorist threat' language appears to imply an acceptance of the denial of rights which belies the otherwise staunch civil liberties approach.

In addition, a critique of the court and judicial system, a huge element in the criminal justice system, is absent from this book.

In the area of sex crimes and sex violence, O'Mahoney reverts largely to male-centred psychology. The huge risks and few gains for women and children entering the Irish criminal justice accusing men of sex crimes are less his focus than the change in sexual mores over recent times. O'Mahoney claims rapid sexual, social and economic changes in Irish society are part of the problem and have created an environment of self-indulgence. Arising out of this he delivers a sort of appeal for freedom with responsibility, but appears to direct it solely at men and for men. He explains serious sex violence and sex crimes by men in sentences such as ``recent revelations have exposed the weakness of individual men...''. He appears to excuse sexual abuse of power by reference to the opposite condition: absence of power or weakness, the very condition normally associated with the victims of rape and sex abuse.

With the exception of this chapter on ``sexual revolutions and revelations'', O'Mahoney's book is nevertheless, a useful and up-to-date guide to the Irish criminal justice system and its failures.

BY RITA O'REILLY

By drum and trumpet

``Had the Irish only remained honest Pagans, Ireland perhaps had been unconquered still''. This is just one of the many jewelled comments that adorn John Prendergast's Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland a book newly published by Constable but actually written and first printed in 1865.

This is an historical book which is also an historical artefact itself. Prendergast began the study in the 1840s when he was commissioned to research genealogical histories in Tipperary. He collected a wealth of primary material culminating in a comprehensive presentation of the events throughout Ireland after the crushing of the Irish forces by Cromwell in 1650.

Prendergast offers readers a mass of material on the Cromwellian plantation that runs from a concise overview down to the detailed stories of those whose lives were torn apart by the forced transplantation of their families to Connacht.

For example, he tells how it was proclaimed by drum and trumpet on market days throughout Ireland in October 1652 that ``On 26 September 1653, all the ancient estates and farms of the people of Ireland were declared to belong to the adventurers and the army of England''.

Alongside this you have the stories such as that of William Spenser, grandson of Edmund Spenser, whose writings on Ireland during the Elizabethan period claimed that the Irish lived under ``the most barbaric and loathy conditions of any people under heaven''. Spenser was given an estate in Fermoy on land confiscated from the FitzGeralds.

William Spenser lost this estate to the English roundheads and his appeal against transplantation even though he renounced Catholicism was in vain.

It is the expertise with which Prendergast chronicles one of the great tragedies of Irish history that makes this a readable book. It sets a benchmark for aspiring historians of today to measure the worth of their work.

By Neil Forde