The Minister, in opening his statement, referred to some remarks of mine on the First Reading, and rather corrected certain things I said. I am going to quote in answer to these remarks what appears in the Official Report, and I ask the Dáil to judge whether I was right in my interpretation, or whether he was right in his. On December 11th, the Minister, in introducing the last Bill, said:—"It will be merely an Internment Bill. It is not proposed now to bring before the Dáil all the Sections of the Public Safety Bill. The idea rather is to break up that Bill into three distinct Bills, one dealing with the question of internment, another being a Firearms Bill which will be permanent, and a Criminal Law Amendment Bill, which will be introduced early in the next Session." On the Second Stage of the previous Bill, he said:—"This Bill deals only with internment. In regard to other portions of the Public Safety Bill, these will be covered in other Bills. I propose to introduce a permanent Firearms Bill and a Criminal Law Amendment Bill. The Bill I am asking Deputies to give favourable consideration to, continues these two Sections dealing with detention and arrest without trial."
Now, I ask anybody to judge of the effect of statements of that kind. When referring to the Firearms Bill, he spoke of it as a permanent Bill, which, by the way, turns out to be a temporary Bill. He also spoke of a Criminal Law Amendment Bill. Who would imagine, then, that the two Bills which were to succeed the Emergency Detention Bill were to be two other temporary Bills, breaking up the old Public Safety Bill into three temporary Bills with emergency powers. We were promised a Criminal Law Amendment Bill. I suppose any Bill that deals with criminal law is a Criminal Law Amendment Bill. When dealing with the Emergency Public Safety Bill of the last session, and noting certain crimes in that Bill to be dealt with after the then temporary Bill was passed, one would undoubtedly come to the conclusion that what was in the Minister's mind was a permanent Bill dealing with criminal law. When the present Bill was introduced as another temporary Emergency Bill, I submit I was justified in saying that that was not a fulfilment of the understanding which could be reasonably taken from this statement I quoted, and which the Minister made on the early stages of this present Bill.
The Minister pleads with deputies not to keep him up until three o'clock in the morning. I assure him I have no desire to do so. I have no intention to harrow his soul with descriptions of the divine process of flogging, notwithstanding the fact that many members of the Dáil are not aware of what this means. I am going to oppose the Second Reading on the general ground that no case has been made to justify another Emergency Bill dealing with criminals, and that there are provisions in the Bill which are objectionable, no matter against whom they may be intended to be applied. I think, when introducing a Bill of this kind dealing with penalties, especially a Bill which is a temporary Bill, we ought to be informed what the penalties under the normal ordinary law are. We are told that it is proposed to inflict certain punishment for certain offences, and are left to try and ferret out the position under the ordinary law. Few deputies have the advantage which, of course, the Minister must have, of corelating the new proposals to the ordinary law. I think it is due to the Dáil to have some explanation of what the ordinary law provides for and what the new Bill intends to substitute. I make the assertion that with regard to robbery with violence, and I think also with reference to arson, there is no occasion for new penalties, and I urge that the ordinary law is quite capable of dealing with most of the offences which are dealt with in this Bill. The Dáil ought to have complete justification for emergency legislation of this kind before agreeing to pass a Bill of a temporary character.
I hope, by the way, that the Minister will consider the argument used in relation to the last Bill referring to the mixed kind of punishment, a fine and imprisonment, the fine being paid off by an agreement to undergo a further term of imprisonment. The Minister has not cared to tell the Dáil the state of the country fearing it may be taken as fouling the nest. I have no desire whatever to lay bare all the horrors that there may be but I submit that before we are asked to pass emergency legislation, which is to take the place of the ordinary criminal law, we ought to be informed of the facts. We ought to be informed as to whether the ordinary law has failed and why it has failed and if the conditions which led to its failure still continue. In answer to a question to-day, the Minister told us that the number of offences under Section 5 paragraph 4 of the Public Safety Act had fallen from 1,502 to 738 in the period from August, 1922, to February, 1923, as compared with the period August, 1923, to February, 1924. That is, the number of offences of a particular character dealt with have fallen by one half. The offences dealt with were robbery under arms and arson, both of which I believe—certainly one —may be punishable by flogging under the ordinary law. Comparing the two periods, the period of August, 1922, to February, 1923, with the period during which what might have been called a state of war prevailed, every house burned, every bank robbery or seizure under arms was an offence and very many of them were alleged to have been committed under instructions. They certainly were committed at a time when armed strife prevailed and men defended themselves by saying that they were doing this as an act of war. In the latter period after this Emergency Bill passed the number fell to 738. That second period ran concurrently with the period during which this armed strife had not continued.
I submit that the effect of the special provisions of Section 5, which is copied with some slight emendation in this new Bill, was not such an effect as was expected or desired. As a matter of fact, the special punishments did not deter; the advertisement of the fact that these punishments would probably follow the offence, would certainly follow the offence if the prisoner were caught and convicted, did not have the deterrent effect which was promised. As a matter of fact, the culprits pitted their wits and their ability to escape against the forces of the State. I submit that the real deterrent in these matters is not the weight of the punishment, but the certainty of arrest. If you can provide for practical certainty of arrest, there is a much more deterrent effect than any punishment that you may prescribe where the chances of arrest are less. Even as late as the third week in December we had a newspaper writing a leading article in these terms:—
A disquieting number of these offences (that is, robbery under arms) has been reported during the last few days. We report this morning no less than four cases of robbery, or attempted robbery by violence, in this city and suburbs. In every case the robbers carried revolvers, and in every case they committed their depredations without interruption or arrest.
There may have been subsequent arrests, I cannot say, but, as a matter of fact, we know that many cases have been reported and no arrests have been made. I venture to say, without any statistical knowledge, but just by observation, that the Minister will find that there has been a decline in the number of such offences with the increased certainty of arrest. With the greater efficiency of the police forces will come a lessening of these offences. That lessening will not come as a result of increasing the weight of the sentence. The Minister pins his faith to the State facing the enemies of society lash in hand. He is welcome to his view of the relations of the State to its enemies. He may defend it by saying that it is mediaeval, and that modernism is a failure; mediaevalism in this, if also in other things, ought to return. Again, he is welcome to his views! I do not think that that is a true conception of the relation of the State to its citizens, even though they are bad citizens. We are asked to decide a question of very great importance, as to what ought to be the principles on which an offender is punished. The Minister says "Vengeance plus deterrents." I dissent, and I say that it is not a right attitude for the State to adopt to its offending citizens to say: "We will be revenged upon your body for your offence."
To take an offender and to place him in a position of absolute impotence, and then wreak your vengeance upon his flesh by a whip may satisfy the conception of the Minister as to what ought to be the relative positions of the State and its citizen, even an offending citizen, but in my view it is degrading, not to the prisoner but to the State. When the Minister uses the word "ignominious," and says they intend that it shall be ignominious, I retort, "I have no objection to the ignominy put on an offender who uses violence against an inoffensive citizen, but I have an objection to the ignominy in which the State is placed when it is asked to use this particular method of punishment." I say it does not even give the results which the Minister would desire, and which we all would desire.
I say again, what I said when this matter was discussed before, that it is not the prisoner or offender I am thinking of; it is the credit of the State, of society, of the community and its good name. I believe it is a bad principle to adopt to say that wrong-doing shall be met by vengeance; vengeance wreaked upon the flesh and the nerves of the offender. You may frighten him, but you do not make a good citizen out of him. The Minister has told us that the state of the country is such that these emergency powers are required. He has given us the information that 545 indictable offences were reported in January. I wonder whether many of these offences would have been indictable under the ordinary law, or whether they are brought into this category because of the existence of emergency legislation? I do not know. I suggest that it would be well if his colleagues in the inner and the outer circle had some idea of the state of the country, and made sure that the facts are such as to warrant the introduction of further emergency legislation. We have one Minister, when asked the question, "What is the general state of the country?" replying, "Tranquility itself; the only noise we hear of is that of a drunken row that is soon over, and, in fact, the country is so quiet that it is getting dreadfully monotonous."
