The Irish Penal Reform Trust has drawn attention, by way of a press release, to certain legislative issues which are now in limbo given the dissolution of the 30th Dáil and in need of urgent attention on the establishment of the 31st Dáil. In particular, the IPRT has highlighted that while the Fines Act 2010 was(…)
The Department of Justice has invited comment on the White Paper discussion document Organised and White Collar Crime. The paper examines the extent of and legal reactions to a vast array of crimes like drug trafficking, fraud, money laundering, white collar crime and bribery. It asserts that the complex nature of such crimes, the degree of(…)
The UK’s Justice Secretary Ken Clarke has repeated his contention first aired in late-June that crime rates are not directly linked to shifts in the numbers of people being imprisoned. In this more recent speech Clarke claimed that rising prosperity may have more effect on crime rates than penal policy. This is an interesting dimension(…)
For more than a year policy makers in Scotland have been considering the radical proposal of the SNP to legislate for a presumption against the imposition of sentences of less than six months. Among the many provisions of the Criminal Justice and Licensing Bill when first introduced was section 17 which sought to discourage the(…)
This contribution to today’s Blog Carnival comes from Professor Jeremy Gans, Associate Professor at Melbourne Law School. Professor Gans researches teaches on all aspects of the criminal justice system. In 2007, he was appointed as the Human Rights Adviser to the Victorian Parliament’s Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee. His early research focused on fact-finding(…)
In the Irish Times yesterday, Conor Lally informs us that the number of people jailed for not paying fines is likely to double this year, bringing the numbers of committals for non payment of fines up to one quarter of all committals to prison. 2,520 people were committed to jail for non payment of a fine(…)
Heated hyperbole in the context of crime and criminal justice all too often leads to rushed, unnecessary and repressive legislation. Debate about justice policy is depicted as involving the polarities of crime control and due process (as if respecting the latter ineluctably leads to inefficiency and undue leniency), and the demands of crime control are(…)
