Pic: Martina Anderson: "English Courts too soft"

Sinn Fein’s Criminal Policy on Justice

By Eamonn McCann

Anyone still living with the delusion that
Sinn Fein is a party of the Left should look up its latest pronouncement on law
and order.

In an article in the 6 February edition of
An Phoblacht, SF candidate for Foyle, Martina Anderson, declares that one of
the reasons the party wanted policing and justice devolved was that the courts
in England were too soft on offenders.

The police bring the culprits to court, she
complained, but British judges merely give them “a slap on the wrists”. Under
devolution, she promised, this will change. Anti-social elements will get
what’s coming to them.

Leaving aside the question of the
judiciary’s supposed independence of politics, many will be surprised at a
Republican ex-prisoner jeering at British courts for being too lenient and
promising a harsher attitude once Republicans have influence over policy. But
history shows that surprise is misplaced.

When Republicans go respectable, they go
the whole hog.

Once they make peace with the
constitutional set-up, they give total support to the status quo. They pass
from being revolutionaries to reactionaries without going through the
intermediate stage of reformism. Ms. Anderson is following in the footsteps of
previous generations - the first Free State government, then de Valera, and so
on.

Debate over sentencing policy goes on all
the time. The pages of the Daily Telegraph in Britain and the Independent in Ireland are frequently full of tirades from retired generals or the
likes of Kevin Myers, shouting that hanging and flogging are the only things
these people understand.

On the other side are those who recognise
the connection between social conditions and the likelihood of offending -
those who are commonly denounced as “bleeding-heart liberals” by Martina
Anderson, Kevin Myers etc.

But it’s a matter of observation that those
who come before the courts are drawn overwhelmingly from the bottom half of
society. This is obvious from who’s in the dock in any magistrate’s court.

The relevance of class is even more obvious
if we look at who’s sentenced to prison.

The poorer you are the more likely you are
to be locked up for a particular offence. Ms. Anderson promises that once Sinn
Fein has a say-so they’ll be locked up for longer. 

In the short-term, there may be some
satisfaction for the victims of crimes in seeing the perpetrators, or people
like the perpetrators, put behind bars. But all experience shows that if you
don’t deal with the underlying causes you simply move the problem on, or put it
in abeyance for a time.

The United States has one of the harshest
punishment regimes in the world. The “three strikes and you’re out” principle
means draconian sentences for relatively minor offences. The most disadvantaged
are most at risk of being jailed. Fewer than five percent of prisoners come
from the top 50 percent of the population – ie, more than 95 percent come from
the bottom half. And, even under Obama, there are more young black men in
prison than there are at college.

But the US also remains one of the most
crime-ridden countries in the West. Put simply, tough sentencing might give
victims a passing thrill, but in the end proves counter-productive. 

Those who want real change have to take a firm
stand against the State cracking down even harder on those with most reason to
feel aggrieved in society. Socialists and all progressive people should reject
Sinn Fein’s law-and-order policies outright.

The aim is to change the system from below,
not defend it from above.