The Irish District Court: A Social Portrait

Chapter 6 - Conclusion

167 Chapter 6 Conclusion Introduction This book focuses on the lowest tier of the Irish criminal court system, the Irish District Court, and in doing so provides not only a detailed account of the work of the court but valuable insights regarding the wider Irish criminal justice system. The book draws on courtroom-based research for which the primary research subjects were non-Irish/non-UK District Court defendants who are referred to as foreign defendants. The research set out to consider whether fair procedures are applied to all defendants before the court; to determine whether there are structural biases within the Irish criminal justice system which contribute to the criminalisation of foreign nationals; to assess the scale of the presence of foreign nationals in the Irish District Court; and to assess the sentencing decisions of the Irish District Court. Conclusions regarding each of these issues are presented later in this chapter. As the research progressed some activities of other arms of the Irish criminal justice system also came under scrutiny. The overwhelming majority of committals to Irish prisons arise from decisions made by the District Court, therefore it provides the ideal location to study the processes which culminate in committals to Irish prisons. A series of decisions by various criminal justice actors can result in accused persons being remanded in custody and in the imprisonment of offenders. The sentences of Irish District Court judges are undoubtedly shaped by the personal orientations and philosophies of individual judges, but judges also take account of the actions and attitudes of other criminal justice actors in deciding whether or not to impose a sentence of imprisonment. So, certain offences may be policed more diligently than others and certain charges may be prosecuted with vigour rather than with a kind of 168 THE IRISH DISTRICT COURT benign disapproval; similarly, assessments by probation officers may be subtly disapproving rather than optimistic in tone; judges are sensitive to these differences and will be slow to disregard the views of other criminal justice actors. The observation of courtroom processes provides insights into the decisions and actions of all the various actors which culminate in imprisonment. The Irish criminal justice system and the criminal justice systems of all developed countries now process defendants whose origins can be traced across the globe. This presents challenges to criminal justice systems which are based on local and national traditions and practices. This book recognises those challenges by focusing largely on foreign rather than Irish defendants. This conclusion begins by considering the perceptions of and evidence for an immigration– crime nexus, and the link between immigration and recent penal expansionism. Immigration, Crime and Penal Expansionism Despite the somewhat contradictory empirical evidence (see, inter alia, Sun and Reed, 2007; Ousey and Kubrin, 2009), perceptions of an immigration–crime nexus are long-standing (Abbott, 1931), and can be linked to historical rituals and practices of expulsion (see Bremner, 1983; Stern, 1991; Vazsonyi and Killias, 2001), and especially the practice of transportation. The British found that the transportation of criminals conveniently removed many who were considered maladjusted or malevolent from the British mainland while also providing a much-needed source of labour to the colonial settlers (Abbot, 1931). American independence finally halted the westward journeys of British convict ships. The use of off-shore prison ships known as ‘Hulks’ provoked great contention, so Britain turned to the ‘desperate experiment’ of founding a colony in the distant lands discovered by Captain Cook to exclusively house criminals (Lewandowski, 1993:8). Australia and Tasmania became the new destinations for Britain’s unwanted convicts, and Britain’s Eastern colonies continued to receive convict ships until transportation finally halted in 1868. Other European countries followed the example of the British and instituted their own versions of transportation. Penal colonies were established by the Dutch in the East Indies, by the Portuguese in Angola, and by the French in Algeria, New Caledonia, and French CONCLUSION 169 Guiana, and it was 1952 before the last penal colony finally closed (see Bender, 1992; Toth, 2006). So, well into the twentieth century the practice of transporting convicted criminals to distant foreign lands continued, a practice which can only have served to support already existing suspicions and fears of foreigners and strangers. In recent years, research suggests that the perceived immigration– crime nexus has strengthened both internationally (Simon and Sikich, 2007) and in Ireland (Watson et al., 2007). The perception that immigration is...