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Diverting young offenders from crime in Ireland: the need for more checks and balances on the exercise of police discretion

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Abstract

The Irish police (the Garda Síochána) have been exercising their law enforcement discretion to pursue a diversionary strategy for young offenders since at least 1953. Working in a street environment of low visibility they have managed to expand their traditional law enforcement function into territory more appropriately reserved for courts, social workers and probation officers. This article charts the development of this expansion and examines its current manifestation in the juvenile diversion programme. It argues that the welfare benefits for the young offenders are being purchased at the cost of due process rights, and that there is a need for more custom built accountability checks and balances to strike a better balance in the programme.

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Notes

  1. According to Denver’s Judge Ben B. Lindsey, the foremost juvenile court promoter, the police dealt with boys “based on a doctrine of fear, degradation, and punishment” [35].

  2. “As the police desire to share in the treatment reaction to crime grew, there developed first in the United States the idea that individual police departments should undertake some form of delinquency prevention and treatment. The development, in 1925, of the Berkeley, California, Police Department’s Crime Prevention Division can probably be considered as the forerunner of most present day police activities in this area” [5; p.404].

  3. The comments of a senior probation officer in a discussion held in London in 1959 as quoted in [36; p.364].

  4. Net widening is a term most commonly used to describe a phenomenon whereby a program is set up to divert youth away from an institutional placement or some other type of juvenile court disposition but, instead, merely brings more youth into the juvenile justice system who previously would never have entered. Instead of shrinking the “net” of social control, one actually “widens” it to bring more in.

  5. In exceptional circumstances an offender may be subject to supervision for a period of 6 months following an informal caution.

  6. For a general overview of the problem and recent attempts to solve it, see [65; ch.2].

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  1. School of Law, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Philip Smyth

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Smyth, P. Diverting young offenders from crime in Ireland: the need for more checks and balances on the exercise of police discretion. Crime Law Soc Change 55, 153–166 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-011-9276-7

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