Brian Lenihan - Challenges for the new minister for justice

Ok so we lost Joe. And we miss him. We really do. At the Dail yesterday they all gave him a nod. Tony Gregory said the place wouldn't be the same. It won't. It will. But it won't.

Fianna Fail are still in charge but Fine Gael's muscles have gotten some electoral steroids. How hard will they punch? Not very, probably. It won't be the same but it will.

One key difference, and one that we in Dublin West hope to benefit from, is the appointment of Brian Lenihan to Minister for Justice, Equality and Law reform. This blog is of the view that Michael McDowell was a man of merit as well as obvious flaw; the most obvious being his tendency to hide his merits behind his flawed whoring of himself for publicity.

Lenihan is different. Expect a lower profile and at least the same level of progressive reform. He faces many challenges. The criminal justice system is a mess that currently jails twice as many people from the Irish underclass than our British counterparts.

Research shows that Irish crime is embedded in certain areas. Lenihan won't have to go far to find them. His own constituency, Dublin West - Dublin 15 - is a great microcosm of suburban Ireland; a clear and growing divide between the gated, well trimmed gardens of Castleknock and the fenced and unkempt patches of Corduff, Sheepmoor, Mountview and Ladyswell.

This is one of the great challenges facing Lenihan and this government - how to reduce criminality and make these places nicer to live in. How to end the intimidation, rampant drug abuse and utter disdain for community responsibilty. Of course this can't be done by the justice ministery alone - support will be needed from Health, Education and Employment. Do it right and crush the ganglands.

The other major point this blog will judge Lenihan on is prison. Obviously there are problems regarding smuggling things into prisons. It's hard to see what harm a bloody budgie does but phones have to be a no-no. A blocking system will solve that. However he must resist calls by the showboating, vacuous tough on crime lobby to Lock Down prisons. One of the merits of the Irish system is the relative harmony between officers and prisoners; this is largely achieved by letting them mix freely. An end to this policy would sharpen the divide and make prisons more dangerous to live and work in.

Furthermore on the subject of prisons, urgent reform of child prisons like St Patrick's is needed. The place is an abject failure that does nothing but teaches wild kids how to become wild adults. It is a disastorous institution, despite the efforts of staff; it has been undermined by a scandalous lack of funding from McDowell and John O'Donoghue before him. Shame on them for their ignorance. In fairness to Lenihan he set up a committee to assess the needs of Oberstown and Trinity House when he was Minister for Children. So the omens are good even if the history of the justice department is a history of injustice.

Adult prisons are also desperately in need of funding. Contrary to popular opinion, prisons are not home to lazy and depraved party animals who get fucked on cheap cider and slouch in front of plasma televisions. It is an indignity of the smelliest and lowest order to have to poo in a bucket and throw it down a drain. More education and drug rehab schemes are needed. Prison is often the first place people can get help to read and write; or get help to get off heroin. With this they have a chance of getting a job on release - without it they haven't got a hope.

So hopefully Lenihan will at least try and sort some of these problmes out. Prisons should not be social dustbins. Put criminals in them, not messers, not the homeless or the mentally ill. I wish him sincere congratulations and good luck in his new post.

About time too

Some good news today. Anybody with a half a brain can see that crime in Ireland is very predictable; where it happens and who does it. Now I'm talking about crime that people get sent to jail for - not harmless, victimless, tax-dodging/fraud/embezzlement or sexual assaults. I'm talking about drug users and dealers, thieves and fighters, your stereotypical, middle-Ireland, Paul Williams definition of a 'bad' guy.

So the good news. Brian Lenihan, candidate for Dublin West and a quite good one I must say, is not a complete moron so he doesn't state the above but he does act on it. Today he announces the funding for the Children's Act 2001 will FINALLY come on stream. This is less popular than ASBOs but it is much more effective in dealing with young people who get into crime (remember about 95% of children in St Pat's will get out, re-offend and end up in Mountjoy...95%! Evidence, I strongly say, that the criminal justice system is failing the Irish public).

Now we will have judges who can actually deal with 15 and 16 year olds, not condescend with arcane language. Families will also be brought in. This is to be welcomed and although the timing is spurious - six years after the Bill came in, six weeks before the general election - Lenihan deserves credit. Youth crime should not, unless it's particularly violent, be dealt with by just the Department of Justice - we need a more expansive approach that involves social welfare, education and justice. This is the only chance we have to make a better Ireland and end the cycles of poverty that are analogous to the cycles of crime.

I've left the key with my neighbour and he's promised to keep an eye on the place, but not sadly my blog. So I'll be away for the weekend and the blog will as productive as a student with a hangover. Alas I will miss blogging on the first round of the French elections - but you can keep in touch if you follow the links on the right of this posting.

Irish General Election - 2007

Way out past the green fields of the Phoenix Park and just beyond the mind-crushing, bumper to bumper M50, lies West Dublin. Famous only for the odd sensational murder, it's also the fastest growing place in Ireland, with a population of over 90,000 at the 2006 census. More people than Galway city, so they say. It is the hearbeat of the new Ireland, the one where catholicism and the English language no longer dominate. There is no real history out here - housing estates are still being piled onto green space and it will take a while to see what effect all this change has. There's no-one really famous, for any reason, from west Dublin. So a place is being created, a community perhaps, a suburb for sure. It's where I live and where I will focus on for the general election.

I won't bore you with the candidates; instead, just to set the ball rolling, here's a taste of what one Fianna Fail man had to say about HIV at a recent meeting between young people and politicans.

"The reason there is a HIV and TB crisis here is because we let people into the country without medical screening. In the US and Australia you have to do a full medical if you want to emigrate there."


That was from Gerry Lynam (right - pun intended), the man with a ronnie that could shine shoes or sweep the streets, Fianna Fail's latest weapon in its war against Socialist Joe Higgins, Labour's Joan Burton and Fine Gael's Leo Varadkar. He's a decent bloke, Gerry Lynam, but is prone to populist, lazy, stereotypical rubbish. Besides pandering to fears, paranoia and uncertainty of the local electorate, he also does himself a diservice.

He has done admirable work for many years as part of the Greater Blanchardstown Repsonse to Drugs. So why come out with - what he surely knows to be - lies? Is he, a man who ran as an independent in the last election, that desperate to be elected that he will ignore what he knows and manipulate what people don't?

HIV and TB were in Ireland long before we had immigration - they were spread, primarily, by repeatedly using the same needles while injecting heroin. That's why so many people with a heroin addiction in Ireland have HIV. That's why we have a crisis - trying to lay the blame on people who can't even vote in the next election is revolting.

(Local paper Community Voice picked up on this and that's where I got it so fair play, it's a good paper).