Sir, - Sergt George Maybury of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors said in an interview on RTE recently that "the guards have the prisons and courts full". The Irish Times in an editorial on January 4th observed that Sergt Maybury had a point, but failed to elaborate.
The general secretary of AGSI was responding to reports that the Strategic Management Initiative had analysed the core problem in the Garda Siochana as merely bureaucratic, to be corrected by structural reform. The extent of the contemplated reform will be revealed in due course. But if the implied contribution of Sergt, Maybury's association is anything to go on, the Strategic Management Initiative may miss the target.
What Sergt Maybury said in the RTE interview was a graphic insight into the malaise in the Garda Siochana, amounting to an admission that the force is failing in its primary purpose to prevent crime.
In his report on Prisons for 1928, the Minister for Justice, James Fitzgerald Kenny, acknowledged the work of the General Prisons Board (1877-1928) attributing to penal reform the wholesale closure of prisons and a significant decrease in the prison population.
The Minister understated the influence of good government in the recent history of the Irish Free State. Between 1924 and 1928 the prison population decreased from a daily average of 1,030 back to 729, where it stood before the Troubles.
As a preventative force, the Garda Siochana was highly visible on patrol in every townland in the State, motivated by the genius of Eoin O'Duffy and supervised by confident sergeants who were dedicated to principles of function defined by Charles Rowan for the New Police in 1829. The radical new approach in the fight against crime was adopted by the Dublin Metropolitan Police a decade later and, with the same conspicuous success, in the last reform of the Irish police service 75 years ago.
It is not the job of the Garda Siochana to fill the prisons empty prison cells would be a better yardstick of efficiency. In the present crisis penologists, sociologists and others have contributions to make. The case for the criminologist was made by Ian O'Donnell in The Irish Times on December 23rd last. There was no soft option it was better "to confront honestly the messy complexity of crime than to punish ever more severely the few who come before the courts and are convicted."
The Garda Siochana needs to recover the initiative in preventing crime before it becomes necessary to fill the prisons and the courts. Policemen must stick to their own last. - Yours, etc.,
193 Upper Kilmacud Road,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.
