Yesterday I had been remarking on the fact that in the past ten years we have had a doubling of the level of serious crime. The response we have put forward as a community has been broadly to expand the crime-fighting industry. In the past ten years, which is a relatively short time, the number of gardaí has increased from just over 8,000 to 11,500. That represents about one garda for every 80 families. It is a level of policing that is extremely high by international standards. The corresponding figures that I have been able to get refer to Britain where the density to policing is about 50 per cent less than is the case here. Equally, there has been a massive increase in the number of prison officers in that time — an increase from 400 to 1,600. This brings us to a situation of having at least a one-to-one ratio as between prison officers and prisoners. Likewise, there has been a significant increase in the level of staffing of the Department of Justice — from 200 to almost 700.
When we consider that expansion in the crime-fighting industry and realise that we have not succeeded in containing the growth of crime, there is a natural tendency on the part of the public to take the easy response of saying that what is wrong is that the powers of the various persons involved on the crime-fighting industry are not adequate and, equally, to say that there is a need for longer prison sentences and for more manpower to fight crime.
We must step back and not rush headlong along that road of throwing more State resources and manpower towards solving the problem of crime in that narrow fashion. This whole structure is designed to help the community to come to terms with the problem of extreme anti-social behaviour. The tendency to compartmentalise that problem, to push it away from the community in general and make it the business of the prison officers, probation officers and the Garda is not healthy. It is a wrong response to a problem that has deeper sources and deserves from the community in general more effort than simply putting it aside for treatment by specialist forces. The tendency of the public to react in that way to the growth of crime and to push it towards the Garda and expand the forces of law enforcement has been consolidated by the growing aloofness from the public of the persons involved in fighting crime. No doubt that is a result of the Garda moving into cars and using sophisticated equipment, but it has in some cases been welcomed by persons involved in fighting crime. The courts almost pride themselves on their distance from the community generally, and that is not healthy.
One reason why are we have evolved a narrowly-based response to crime comes out in a statement that I read in the recently published discussion paper on community policing from the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors. The statement says that there is almost a total absence of any statistical information which provides a relationship between an analysis of crime and community needs and problems. It says that the annual crime reports provide only a very rough guideline to the overall extent of crime reported to the Garda. There is no attempt to analyse the figures into when and where crime was committed in the cities; neither do the reports attempt to provide any answer to questions such as: how does the nature of the environment affect the location of crime? Does the positioning of amenities in the cities dictate where crime occurs? Does the amenity create the stimuli or the increased criminal opportunity around it? In other words, why and by whom is crime being committed? Statistical data at present does not provide answers. Therefore, it is obvious that the first step for the Garda is to set about compiling this information. The lack of that sort of information to which the Garda themselves refer contributes greatly to the narrow way in which we respond to crime and to dealing with the problem.
I welcome what I believe are the flickerings of a new response to the problem of crime from the Garda and from the Department of Justice. Very sincerely I welcome the attempt by the present Minister for Justice to bring in an alternative to prison sentencing. The sheer cost of keeping a person for a year in prison is one reason for that. The all-in cost, not just the cost of maintenance, can be reckoned at about £30,000 per year. That is a massive amount of money and on those very narrow economic grounds there is adequate reason for looking for alternatives to prison. That is why we must welcome the move to introduce community service orders and to bring in the possibility of community service instead of imprisonment for suitable offenders. However, some people have responded to that initiative by pointing to the difficulties involved and asking who will oversee it, again betraying a tendency to want to package this alternative approach to crime and push it from the community.
We must consider different ways of dealing with criminal offenders. I would like to see the Minister for Justice when dealing with the possibility of community service orders inviting youth organisations, who only this week have shown their commitment to improving the plight of youth, to see whether they can facilitate young offenders and get them involved in useful work and services. The Minister must go further along the path of alternatives to prison. In my constituency there is an ordinary house on an ordinary street where people who are referred from the courts are taken in and given a good environment in which to live. They are not held there under force but are given the opportunity to become involved in training and various activities. Such a response from community groups should be welcomed and backed by funding from Government. It is not just a simple call for more money. We can afford to put more money in that direction when we realise the cost of the alternative of prision. The Minister should pilot other alternatives. In Britain the idea of week-end military type training for young offenders has been tried. Maybe that is not a correct response but it is worth looking at and perhaps it could be piloted here in a small way.
It is heartening to see the way in which the Garda organisation and the prison service are being examined. There is no doubt that there are widespread public misgivings about the training, recruitment and organisation of the Garda as being the best possible to handle the growth of crime. Deputy Harney spoke in this debate about the deficiencies that appear to be present in the training of the Garda to match them to the tasks that they face. Apart from improving the organisation and management of the Garda and perhaps looking at the possibility of recruiting for specialist purposes people who have specialist training, it is important that at last there is recognition within the Garda that the growth away from the community that has occurred over the years has been unwelcome. It is the community who are in the front line in dealing with crime. They are first and foremost affected. We must give the community some effective way of containing the problem.
I welcome the initiative taken by the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors in publishing their views on a scheme for community policing. The idea is good, but I am worried about some of the changes in the way the police are organised which might pass as community policing. In particular I feel that a garda at every street corner who would during the course of the year call on the various houses in the street is not the essence of community policing. It seems much more like a recipe for saturation policing and further growth in police numbers. The essential feature of community policing is to get the community involved at neighbourhood level.
I would take some small issue with the emphasis of the report of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors on community policing. It seems to emphasise involvement at a very high level in the community, namely at local authority and health board level. The need is rather to push it down to the man in the street and to involve him in an active way in being aware of crime, of what can be done and how to deal with offenders. With those small reservations, I welcome the attention the association are giving to the matter of bringing the community into the job of policing.
As the Minister said, in this Bill we are dealing with only a small part of the overall problem of dealing with crime. To draw an analogy from the health area, we are probably dealing with the procedure of surgery which, while it is important, is only a very small part of health care. In the same way, the provisions being considered today are only the surgery end of dealing with the problem of crime. I do not intend to devote my speech to lamenting what other things might be done on another day. I know this Minister is committed to finding better responses to the problem of crime.
There are many features of the Bill which I welcome. The provisions with regard to sentencing and the procedures in court are worthy of support. The idea of sentencing for crimes committed while on bail is welcome. The provision to make it an offence to skip bail without reasonable explanation, to increase the sentence for use of firearms and the provisions regarding majority verdicts in the courts are to be welcomed. The Bill has responded to the growing problem, particularly in Dublin, of the unauthorised taking of motor vehicles. The offence is being made a more serious one and the Garda will be given new powers of detention in relation to such offences. For many years the taking of a vehicle was considered a minor crime because one could not prove the people responsible meant to permanently deprive the owner of the vehicle. This was an unfortunate anomaly and the public could not understand it. The persons who took the cars were a serious danger to the community when engaged in joy-riding. The change here is welcome. In the area of trial procedures the need to present an alibi will have to be notified to the courts in advance. The accused person will no longer be able to make a statement in court unless he is willing to go on oath and be open to cross-examination. This is a sensible change. In many of the areas the changes proposed are more remarkable for the need to enact them than for their novelty. Most people would have thought many of the changes were already in our laws. It is probably a testimony to the length of time since there has been a proper re-examination of the criminal justice system that we have had to enact the changes at this stage.
I wish to deal with the area where I believe there will be some contention, namely, the new powers relating to detention and relating to inference from silence of a person in detention. The aim of the proposals is to raise the probability of detection and of conviction. They are at the heart of the Bill. Obviously we recognise they are only part of what is involved in fighting crime but it is important that we make the possibility of detection by the Garda more likely.
With regard to inference, as I understand it, the change here permits inference to be drawn only if the judge so directs from the silence of a person taken into the Garda station where subsequently explanations were offered in his defence. In other words, there is the protection there that the person has to rely on explanations in his defence later on because he did not afford them at an early stage when interrogated by the Garda. I understood from the Minister's speech that already there is the power to draw an inference from silence. The Minister said: "An inference can be drawn from silence in the face of something said in his presence about the conduct in respect of which he is charged." I do not know the legal interpretation of the word "conduct" but, as a layman, I would have interpreted it to mean that if reasonable questions were put to the accused about his movements and about incriminating evidence found in his possession he would be obliged to provide an answer or else some inferences could be drawn.
I can accept the strengthening of this provision as envisaged in sections 17 and 18 to make him account for marks or for his presence in a certain place. However, as I understand it, section 16 envisages that replies will be required to any questions regardless of whether they refer to circumstantial evidence if those questions are put by the Garda. It seems to me we are taking a large step from merely asking an accused person to account for circumstantial evidence to almost requiring him to present his entire case for the defence. To require such a change may be going too far in that area. I should like some restrictions on that section.
The Minister pointed out that the protection involved to prevent abuse of section 16 is that the trial judge will decide when inference is proper so that there will not be an uncontrolled possibility for the court to draw inferences from the silence of the accused. However, I am rather worried about this total reliance on the trial judge because presumably he is there only to interpret what the law says. Unless we tighten up the law it would be open for the prosecution at least to argue before a court that all kinds of inferences could be drawn from the silence of a person in custody. It is up to legislators to tie down what is a proper case for inference rather than to leave it entirely to the discretion of the judge.
The Minister also pointed out that there is protection in the fact that the accused will have been warned. I agree that gives some protection. However, while those protections may extend to 99 per cent of the cases, it is up to the legislators to try to provide a water-tight law with as little as possible reliance on discretion and as little as possible cause for error to be made. In principle, I feel the full case for the defence should not require to be presented at the interrogation stage. I am all the more worried about that since at that stage there will not be a guarantee that the person in detention will have spoken with a solicitor. We are putting a serious onus upon the person in detention to be well informed of his legal rights.
The changes involved in section 15 will have much less effect in bringing people to justice, certainly in the case of the godfathers whom we are trying to get at with the powers envisaged here. Rather, the powers envisaged here will have the greatest impact on the least articulate and they are not the most serious menace. Because of their lack of knowledge and expertise they may be confused into thinking silence is their best defence or they may be trying to protect others while they themselves are in detention in a very unfamiliar setting. Are the extra powers given really necessary to get after the godfathers? Should we not go for a much more restricted onus on persons to answer questions? Likewise, the right to draw inferences should be restricted, meeting persons in a particular place, certain marks on clothing, the possession of certain property, the carrying of weapons and so on. That would go a long way to allaying fears about any encroachment on the rights of vulnerable and inarticulate people.
On the question of detention, a very novel change is envisaged. If we are going to be serious about the detection of crime, detention must be available in the case of serious offences. The Garda should not be asked to engage in a proper investigation of crime if they cannot detain people in pursuit of their inquiries. Coupled with a certain restricted onus on persons in detention to answer questions, the right to search a person, or property, or house, or car should be given to the Garda. Here I would like to quote from the O'Brian Report published some years ago: "We believe that most people who go to Garda stations to assist police in their inquiries do so under the misapprehension that they have no other choice than to do so". This practice has been condoned and has as a result become an established law. What we are doing here is not so much introducing a new practice in investigation to regularise something that is already going on and, far from encroaching on peoples' rights, we may be depriving the vulnerable and inarticulate of rights of which they are not aware and have not been receiving.
It is wrong to see this as something new. It is probably introducing some measure of regulation and control of a practice that has been going on. It is probably true to say that only the more shrewd criminals know their rights and are able to avoid being detained against their wishes. The objections to detention are twofold. One reason for detention was to compel attendance at court. We have now breached that principle. The case was also made that there is an inviolable right to silence on the part of persons being detained. I do not believe it is acceptable that in support of principles like this, we should reach the situation, to which the Minister referred, in which information given voluntarily can become inadmissable in court. That would be ridiculous. It is equally ridiculous to suggest that a suspect must be granted the right to leave the Garda station and be informed of his right to do so. That is a foolish provision if we are serious about giving the investigation of crime serious consideration. The right to silence and the right not to be deprived of liberty are not absolute and there is a duty on all of us to assist and co-operate with the Garda in the reasonable pursuit of their investigation into crime. Detention and the answering of certain questions are reasonable methods of helping investigation in our present difficult circumstances.
In passing, we must recognise that some people when detained might be in a state in which they could not be questioned at all. They might be under the influence of alcohol or drugs. From that point of view I welcome the possibility of interrupting the period of detention. In principle I support the idea of detention but we must ensure it is used only where it is justified as otherwise there might be a danger of encroaching on peoples' rights. The Minister referred to the double check to ensure that the Garda are acting reasonably in pursuit of their investigation into serious crime. That is to be decided by the individual garda and the officer in charge of the station. There will be a limit of six hours' detention no matter how many crimes are being investigated. The third protection is that the accused be informed of his right to have reasonable access to a solicitor and, fourthly, a document on his rights will be presented to the person being detained and, if necessary, explained to him.
I accept there is a fair degree of protection built into the Bill but I am not entirely satisifed. It is our duty as legislators not to tie down the Garda in pursuit of their investigations when a person is being detained. There must, of course, be a reasonable ground for detention and the criteria should be spelled out clearly in the Bill. What is reasonable should be clearly stated and not left vague as it now is.
Equally, the Bill should be amended to impose upon the Garda, both the detaining garda and the officer in charge, the duty to write down the offence in which the person is believed to be involved and also the reasonable grounds for bringing in that person. I do not believe that any complaints procedure can operate properly unless we have such a written account of why a person was brought in during the course of an investigation. Not only are these changes needed to restrict the use of that right but also so that there will be a proper record if complaints subsequently arise.
I share some public concern that there is not a schedule of serious offences published in the Bill where the power of detention may be used. It has been pointed out that some quite minor offences could fall into the category of offences having a maximum five-year penalty. An aggravated version of a certain offence might carry a maximum penalty of five years and the Garda might detain a person for a much more minor offence on these grounds. There is a possible danger of a much more widespread use of this detention power than the Dáil would like to give to the Garda. The inclusion of a schedule of serious offences would be a more sensible way to deal with the problem.
The Minister said there would not be a possibility of rolling one six-hour period into another in relation to different offences in which a person was believed to be involved. He also said, however, that a person could be detained if he were believed to be involved in another serious offence. I do not know how to square those two points. It is unthinkable that a garda would not be able to take in a person for a new serious offence in which he was involved. The only way to ensure that there is not abuse is to insist that the Garda write down the offence for which they are holding a person and the grounds on which the person was brought in. Later complaints could then be properly investigated with some documentary evidence.
Another area in relation to which I have some reservations stems directly from points made in the Ó Briain Report. The report states quite clearly that in some cases the Garda have not always cautioned a person of his rights. Equally it was pointed out that the Garda have in some cases been less than wholehearted in their co-operation in granting access to a solicitor. Ó Briain points out that 80 per cent of crimes are being solved by confessions and this indicates a reluctance by the Garda to get evidence by other methods. The fact that Ó Briain has highlighted the improper application of protections which are supposed to exist already is a worrying feature. We must view with some misgivings the indications in the Ó Briain Report that these procedures are not being followed rigorously.
The Minister has told us that an amended document of rights will be handed to a detained person and explained if necessary, but this should be built into the Act and made a statutory requirement. Where inference is drawn from silence there is a statutory requirement, but it should also be required statutorily that anyone detained should be presented with a statement of rights.
I am sympathetic towards Ó Briain's recommendations on the question of detention. He suggested that a custodial guardian should be assigned from among the Gardaí in the station where the person is detained who would be given the explicit job of protecting the rights of the person being detained and would have the power to record anything that was done or any reason he had to believe that a person was not getting his proper rights. He would record this in a log book kept in the station. Those ideas seem very reasonable and ought to be considered. Ó Briain also suggested that a central agency should be set up so that the whereabouts of any person detained would be available to members of the family or a lawyer. That is a sensible idea which should be enshrined in the Bill.
Another point worthy of consideration is that a person should be questioned only if he has had access to a legal adviser or, if not, where he consents to be questioned. These are sensible protections which do not appear to be in this Bill. Perhaps the Minister would say in his reply whether these matters could be dealt with by some other means, such as ministerial order. I would prefer to see provisions made in the Bill, if possible.
Ó Briain also called for the appointment of a panel of duty solicitors who would be present at questioning. I sympathise with the Minister in not giving the right to a panel of duty solicitors to attend as observers at an interrogation. That would probably go too far and undermine the whole usefulness of interrogation. However, the right to consult with a solicitor should be more firmly enshrined and some question should be raised in the Minister's mind as to whether the Garda are co-operating wholeheartedly in this matter. Action should be taken to ensure that in future there is more wholehearted co-operation, if the findings of Judge O Briain are accurate.
The Bill has been criticised in public for failing to give the Minister the authority to lay down the conditions under which a person would be questioned when in detention. If that is the case—I am no legal expert—those conditions should be laid down. The Minister should be able to lay before the House an order specifying the way in which a person detained should be dealt with while in custody. In the future if it is found that unforeseen abuses are creeping into the detention procedures the Minister should be able to bring before the House proposals to change the way people are being dealt with without amending the Bill. I imagine such a power could be built into section 26 which gives the Minister the right to order tape recording. He should be able to order wider changes if he deems them necessary.
I welcome the Bill. There are many valuable provisions in it but I would like the Minister to tighten up on the two novel and contentious powers being introduced. He should tighten up on when it is reasonable to detain a person and for what offences. There should be more explicit protection there and a clearer statement in the Bill as to what is deemed reasonable. In the case of inference from silence there should be a tighter statement in the Bill of when inference can properly be drawn. I would like this confined to inference being drawn from the person's silence if he is asked questions which are backed by circumstantial evidence such as his presence at the scene of the crime.
