Senators will be aware of the Minister's commitment to introduce Criminal Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bills periodically. The aim of this is to facilitate the speedy introduction of measures to enhance the operational efficiency and effectiveness of criminal law and procedure. The Minister recently set up an advisory group on criminal law and procedure made up of people with appropriate expertise and whose remit is to provide the Minister with ongoing advice in this regard. I am happy to have the opportunity of bringing this Bill, which is the first Criminal Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, before the House.
Sections 3, 4, 5, 6 and 17 have as their objective the reduction of the amount of time spent by gardaí on court and court related duties, and the amount of resources accounted for by these duties. The sections will relieve gardaí as far as possible of non-operational duties in the courts and help to ensure a greater presence of uniformed gardaí in our communities. They will also speed up aspects of court procedure in criminal matters.
A significant proportion of Garda time, especially in the Dublin metropolitan area, is accounted for by the need under existing criminal procedure in the courts for the prosecuting garda to attend court in person to give evidence of arrest, charge and caution on the occasion of the first appearance of an accused before the court. Many of these attendances occur outside the members' rostered duty periods and, therfore, the requirement to attend court involves the payment of overtime which could be better spent on crime prevention and detection.
Section 6 allows gardaí to give evidence by certificate of certain procedural matters, including evidence relating to arrest, charge and caution, with the purpose of relieving them from the obligation of attending in person in court to give such evidence orally. In practice, this evidence is rarely challenged. In the case of a serious offence, where the prosecuting garda opposes a bail application, he or she will need to be in attendance to give reasons bail is opposed. Overall, I am satisfied however that in most cases of first appearances before the court of accused persons, under the provisions of section 6, there will be no need for the prosecution garda to attend court.
The Bill provides that where the court considers that the interests of justice so require, the court may require the arresting garda to give viva voce evidence and adjourn the proceedings for that purpose. That can be done at any stage in the proceedings. This very necessarily reflects the importance attached by the courts to oral evidence.
At present, when a person is arrested, the Garda has discretion under the Criminal Procedure Act, 1967, to release the accused on station bail to appear in the District Court "at the appropriate time and place". The difficulty is that it is unclear whether the existing provision refers to the next sitting of the District Court or some time and place considered appropriate by the Garda. In practice it operates with reference to the next sitting of the District Court. Frequently, that next sitting of the court will be at a time when the arresting garda is not on duty and the garda will have to attend in court, thereby giving rise to overtime costs.
Section 3 provides that the Garda may release a person on bail from a Garda station to appear before the District Court at the next sitting or any sitting within 30 days of the next sitting of the court. This will give the Garda more flexibility with regard to court appearances and help avoid the need for Garda overtime on these duties which could be better spent on operational duties.
Section 4 extends from eight to 15 days the existing statutory limit for remanding an accused person in custody on that person's second or subsequent appearance before the District Court. No change is being made with regard to the period that a person may be remanded in custody on a person's first appearance in court as the accused must have the opportunity to obtain legal representations and advice before the longer remand period comes into effect. Where the accused person consents to continuing remand in custody, the upper limit will continue to be 30 days. The section does not affect the law relating to periods of remand on bail.
Section 4 enables a court to remand an accused person in custody for a period less than the proposed maximum of 15 days in certain circumstances. I have no doubt that there will be occasions when a court feels that in particular cases it should bring an accused before it more quickly than the maximum period permissible.
Remands in custody are a very frequent feature of the criminal process before a case is ready to proceed to a hearing. Currently, a considerable amount of Garda time and manpower is taken up with attendance in court for appearances of accused persons on remand. Much of the time, there is no likelihood of the substantive hearing proceeding especially where the preparation of a Book of Evidence is involved. The provision for longer remand periods will result in a significant saving in the time spent by gardaí in court attendance.
Section 5 addresses the problem of the long distances which a remand prisoner escort — which can comprise one Garda driver and two gardaí, although this will vary — is often required to cover and the implications this has for Garda time and resources. At present when an accused person is remanded by, say, the Galway District Court, that person will normally be held in Mountjoy Prison, and the next and all subsequent remand appearances of that person will be before the District Court in Galway. This can involve a full day's duty for each of three gardaí bringing the prisoner from Mountjoy to the court in Galway and back later that day to Mountjoy. The requirement that a remand appearance be in the court having jurisdiction in the case gives rise to a heavy commitment of Garda time and resources.
Section 5 will allow the District Court having jurisdiction in a case to remand an accused person in custody to an alternative court in the District Court district in which the prison where he or she is being held is located or in an adjoining District Court district. This should result in substantial savings in costs of transport and Garda time, especially where the court of jurisdiction is a considerable distance from the remand prison. In future, where an accused is remanded in custody by, say, the Galway District Court and that person is held in Mountjoy, it will be possible for the court to remand that person to appear at the end of the initial remand period in a District Court venue in the Dublin metropolitan district. The Bill allows subsequent remand hearings to be conducted in the Dublin court in this example. When the case is ready to be heard, the section provides that the alternative court will have the power to remand the person to a sitting of the court in the District Court district in which the offence was committed or where the person resides or was arrested. I am confident that this provision will yield substantial savings in Garda time and expenditure on these duties.
I will now deal with section 17 of the Bill. The Criminal Justice Act, 1951, provides that a person arrested on warrant or charged following arrest without warrant must be brought before a District Court judge as soon as practicable. If arrested on a warrant or charged following arrest without warrant after 10 p.m., a person may be brought before a District Court judge the following day before noon. What this 10 o'clock rule means is that, if arrested on a warrant or charged following arrest without a warrant before 10 p.m., the person must be brought before a District Court judge that night. This means that arresting gardaí in these circumstances must attend court almost nightly in the Dublin metropolitan district. I have been concerned for some time about the consequences of this recruitment for Garda and judicial time and court resources. The all round cost of the night court system is considerable. Perhaps even more important is its effect on policing levels in the community especially at night.
To address this problem, section 17 provides that it shall be sufficient compliance with the requirement to bring a person before a District Court judge as soon as practicable if a person, having been arrested on a warrant after 5 p.m. or having been arrested without warrant and charged after 5 p.m., is brought before a judge of the District Court not later than noon on the following day. I am satisfied that this procedure will operate in such a way that there will be no need for courts to sit at night for these purposes.
There are many statutory provisions empowering the courts to issue search warrants to enable the gardaí to search premises for various items, including stolen goods, firearms and many other specific items such as video recordings and racist material. A good example is the Misuse of Drugs Act, 1977, as amended by the Criminal Justice (Drug Trafficking) Act, which provides for the issue of search warrants in respect of drug trafficking offences.
However, there is no general statutory provision for the issue of search warrants in relation to the commission of serious offences such as murder or rape. I am very much aware that this can have serious implications for the detection by the gardaí of the most serious types of offences. This has been a noticeable deficiency in the criminal law for a long time. Section 10 will remove that very serious impediment to criminal investigation.
The section contains a provision for the issue by a judge of the District Court on the sworn evidence of a Garda inspector or a garda of a higher rank, of a search warrant for the search of any place and any person found at that place where the judge is satisfied that there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that evidence of certain specified serious offences is to be found at that place. This will enable the gardaí to search for and seize evidence such as knives in cases involving, for example, murder or an offence involving serious bodily injury, false imprisonment, rape or any offence set out in the First Schedule to the Bill.
The purpose of section 12 is to replace section 28 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1984, with a new section. The proposed section provides for the taking of palm prints and photographs by the gardaí following the conviction of a person. Section 28 currently provides for the taking of fingerprints only. The new provision will be of assistance to gardaí, for example, in a case where a person reoffends and leaves a palm print but not a fingerprint at the scene of the crime. I believe the gardaí should have as complete a profile as possible of a convicted person so that person can be subsequently identified if he or she reoffends.
Section 13 amends the Criminal Law Act, 1976. That Act allows a member of the Garda to use reasonable force to compel a person to comply with a requirement to stop a vehicle, including the placing of a barrier or other device in the path of a vehicle. That power relates to a number of offences specified in section 8 of that Act. The power does not extend to the offence under section 112 of the Road Traffic Act, 1961, of unlawfully taking a vehicle.
The Garda authorities have been concerned for some time about motor vehicles being taken without the consent of their owners and used in the commission of crime. They have been looking at means to reduce the amount of damage caused by the drivers of these vehicles. They are satisfied from tests carried out that a tyre deflating device known as the stinger, which is in use in other EU countries, will prove to be an effective way of addressing the problem. The use of the stinger in these circumstances is permitted by section 8 of the Criminal Law Act, 1976, so that all that is required is to add section 112 of the Road Traffic Act, 1961, to the list of offences specified in section 8 of the 1976 Act. The effect of this provision will be to allow the gardaí to use this new device to stop vehicles unlawfully taken by so-called joyriders. The stinger will be used by trained gardaí under very strict supervision under Garda guidelines.
Section 2 has two separate purposes in amending the Criminal Justice Act, 1984. Section 4 of that Act specifies that where a member of the Garda Síochána has enough evidence to prefer a charge against a person who has been detained under the provisions of that Act, "he shall without delay charge that person" unless the continued detention of the person is necessary in connection with an offence other than the one for which the person was arrested.
This has given rise to difficulties particularly in two areas. First, it seems to be the case that this can be interpreted too rigidly and members of the Garda Síochána may proceed to prefer a charge before the matter is fully investigated. Secondly, an issue has been made in court in some cases that evidence should be declared inadmissible because it was acquired while a person was detained after there had been sufficient evidence to prefer a charge. Generally, the courts have concluded that the section, in effect, should be interpreted widely and that a person need not be charged while an investigation continues which could have a bearing on the evidence that might be sufficient to ground the charge.
Paragraph (b) of section 2 makes it clear that the detention should be strictly related to its being necessary for the purpose of the investigation and that the person should be released when the detention is no longer necessary for the investigation of the offence, rather than when there is enough evidence to charge, unless the person is to be brought before a court in connection with a charge or is to be detained in relation to another offence. The amendment, in reality, does little more than restate the law as interpreted by the courts but should have the advantage of making the position clear to those operating these provisions. The Criminal Justice (Drugs Trafficking) Act, 1996 contains a similar provision and this opportunity is being taken to restate the law in regard to offences under the 1984 Act.
Paragraph (c) of section 2 arises from recent court decisions in regard to periods of detention under section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1984. Section 4 of the 1984 Act provides for detention periods of six hours from the time of arrest under the section and a further period not exceeding six hours if a garda not below the rank of superintendent has reasonable grounds for believing that such further detentions is necessary.
Section 4 also provides for the suspension of the reckonable detention period for the purposes of rest and medical attention. The effect of paragraph (c) is that where a person being detained under section 4 attends court to challenge the lawfulness of the detention, the time during which that person is absent from the station shall also be excluded in reckoning a period of detention permitted by this section.
Sections 8 and 9 of the Bill concern certain powers of the Director of Public Prosecutions. Under the Criminal Justice Act, 1951, the District Court may try a person charged with certain scheduled indictable offences if it considers that the facts constitute a minor offence, and the accused consents to summary disposal. The Director of Public Prosecution's consent is necessary for summary disposal of only a few of those indictable offences and in general these are the less serious ones. The consent is not necessary for summary disposal of a range of serious offences including robbery, burglary, forgery or indecent assault.
The existing law in this regard appears anomalous and section 8 provides that the Director of Public Prosecution's consent shall be required for the summary disposal of all indictable offences scheduled in the 1951 Act. In a given case, where the facts known to the prosecution reveal a serious offence, this will allow the Director of Public Prosecutions to refuse his consent to summary disposal of the matter.
The Criminal Justice Act, 1951, also provides that when a person is convicted of an offences he or she may admit guilt to other offences and ask that they be taken into account in deciding punishment by the court. When an offence has been taken into consideration the accused cannot subsequently be prosecuted for it. The gardaí and prosecution who are present in court may have no knowledge of the offences that the accused wishes to have taken into account and may be unable to provide the court with information on the seriousness of the offences. In these circumstances, there is a risk that over-lenient sentences could be imposed due to inadequate consideration of offences "taken into account". These offences may be more serious than they appear. Section 9 provides that the Director of Public Prosecution's consent will be required before offences, which are not the subject of the charges before a court, may be taken into consideration.
I now wish to turn to the main remaining provisions of the Bill. The purpose of section 11 is to remove any doubt that may exist, however remote that fingerprints or palm prints taken by electronic means cannot be used in evidence. It also provides that a photograph or a fingerprint or palmprint certified by the member of the force who took it shall be evidence of the matters stated in the certificate unless the contrary is proved. This means that it will not be necessary for the garda who say, took a photograph, to give oral evidence in court that the photograph is that of a particular person.
The purpose of section 18 is to provide a single enabling provision for the Minister for Justice to make prison rules dealing particularly with the treatment of offenders. The provision will replace the existing enabling provisions which are set in legislation dating back some 120 years. Draft new prison rules have been prepared by the Department of Justice and were published in 1994 in the policy document The Management of Offenders — A Five Year Plan. The new enabling provision is required in order to avoid any possible complications relating to the Minister's power to make these rules.
There is a commitment in the policy document A Government for Renewal that “the proposed new prison regulations shall be referred to the Dáil Committee on Legislation and Security” and the Bill provides that these rules will be laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas in the normal way. The new rules, when implemented, will replace the 1947 rules for the government of prisons which are to a large extent obsolete. These new rules will reflect the practical requirements of a modern prison system and will benefit both prison management and the prisoners.
The purpose of section 19 is to enable the District Court to provide itself with a seal and to provide that an order of the District Court which has been sealed and authenticated by the signature of a District Court clerk shall be a record of the decision of the District Court. The difficulty with the existing procedure is that each order must be signed by the District Court judge and, of course, this can take a considerable length of time. The section will continue to allow the record of a decision to be an order signed by a judge of the District Court but, in addition, it will also provide that an order affixed with the seal of the District Court and authenticated by the signature of a District Court clerk shall equally be a record of a decision of the District Court.
A similar provision applies in the Circuit Court under rules of court. In that court, orders may be sealed and authenticated by the signature of the county registrar. The section will help to improve the administration of the District Court.
The Criminal Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill is just one element of the Minister for Justice's law and order response to crime. It is an important measure for reform of the criminal law, however, containing several practical measures which have as their objective the improved use of Garda resources and the strengthening of the capacity of the Garda Síochána to respond to serious crime, and greater efficiency in the operation of the criminal justice system.
Other criminal law reform measures which will be brought before this House include a Criminal Law Bill updating the criminal law and clarifying the Garda Síochána's powers of arrests which is currently before the Dáil, and new Bills dealing with non-fatal offences against the person, juvenile justice, criminal insanity and fraud.
I look forward to hearing the views of Senators on the Bill which I commend to the House.