A Different Class of Crime

Okay, the vast majority of those in (say) Mountjoy are young working class men. But having heard the tribunals and the investigations, what does this actually tell us? That these are the least effective criminals (after all, they got caught) or that they have least influence in Irish society?

What it doesn't say is that working class youths are more likely to commit crimes. Yet, that's the basis on which the GardaL operate when they set out to prevent wrongdoing. They don't target white-collar workers or sex offenders. Indeed, it goes further. They even target working class areas. When it was reported that they reckoned that 13 criminal gangs control crime in Dublin, everybody knew what they were talking about. And, despite what we were hearing about cliques and well, gangs, I suppose, at the tribunals, it wasn't white-collar crime they had in mind.

It's philosophically and scientifically unjustifiable. One of the basic tenets of science is that correlation does not prove causation. Yet, they seem to believe that all working class people are at risk of becoming criminals, and particularly young males who have dropped out of school early. And they've got a lot of money under the National Development Plan to pursue this approach.

Has nobody told them? Most working class people don't commit crime! Really!

But this guff must go down well somewhere. In the suburbs and on Liveline, perhaps. Indeed, the panic about drunken violence outside night-clubs and super-pubs is less about drink and thuggery than about young middle class males committing what are seen to be working class crimes.

What the bould O'Donoghue doesn't seem able to accept, nor indeed the Gardam, is the causal link between disadvantage and crime. And preventing crime isn't about feel-good youth projects, it's about a different set of relationships in society.

Take the late Anthony Cawley. He hanged himself in Wheatfield prison earlier this year. He had a tough life, and a long history of harming himself and others. He had raped a cellmate while himself serving a sentence for rape. But he was also very intelligent, according to prison staff. The last straw was being described as 'The Beast' by one of Ireland's tabloids. He did terrible things, but when you look at the life he led, did he have all that much freedom to choose?

Well, you know the central tenet of zero tolerance is that the small crimes are picked up and prosecuted. That's the hard-nosed attitude O'Donoghue hammered home against Nora Owen. Right. But this year we heard of alleged Garda corruption in Donegal of a very serious nature. We even heard of a nightclub owner who served three years for a crime he says he didn't commit, and the DPP appears to agree with him, because his appeal was not contested. And when John Carthy was cut down after a siege, the GardaL were completely exonerated. And of course, in October O'Donoghue's Garda-driven car was stopped for speeding.

The car was being used to take his wife and family and a family friend home from a "treat" in Dublin - the All-Ireland hurling final. Horrible patronising terminology, that. But such was his excuse. And the driver had let his mind wander and exceeded 100 mph in a 60 mph zone outside Castleisland. But he was "a skilled professional", so that was OK.

Well John-boy, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.