At Launch of ‘Putting the Gangs Out of Business’
Thursday, 17 May, 2007
NEW APPROACH NEEDED FOR NEW CRIMINALS
The first duty of any government must be to ensure, to the greatest extent possible, the safety of its citizens.
Unfortunately, in this country the casual taking of human life has become commonplace. The last two years were the worst in the history of the state for gun murders, the vast majority of them carried out by criminal gangs. Last year there were 27 gun murders. The previous year there were 21. Indeed since Michael McDowell made his particularly ill-judged comment about the ‘last sting of a dying wasp’ in November 2005, I estimate that 54 people have died in gun murders.
What must add to the alarm about this shocking level of violence is the very poor conviction rate. Figures provided by Michael McDowell to me show that over the past ten years convictions were obtained in just about 16% of the recorded gun murders. For instance of the 21 gun murders recorded during 2005, only four were regarded as having been detected, with proceedings commenced in just two cases.
Unfortunately the message that the gang leaders draw from these stark statistics is that if you kill or order the killing of others, there is little chance that you will face prosecution and even less chance of being convicted. A conviction rate of just 16% for gun murders should never be acceptable in a democratic society.
These shocking figures are a direct reflection of the emergence of a new and particularly vicious breed of criminal, who have easy access to weapons and who are prepared to use them. The fact that many of those who were victims of these killings were members of criminal gangs should not in any way lessen our sense of indignation or diminish our concern. Victims also included those who led exemplary lives such as young Anthony Campbell and Donna Cleary.
What is more, it is very clear that if the criminal gangs believe that they can get away with killing each other, it will be only a matter of time before a lawyer or a judge of a Garda or – as happened before, a journalist – will be singled out for assassination.
Indeed it was the murder of Veronica Guerin in 1996 that provided the impetus for the all out assault on the criminal gangs initiated by the then Rainbow Government. Among the key initiatives taken was the establishment by my colleague, Ruairi Quinn, of the Criminal Assets Bureau.
The decisions we took at the time led to the breaking up of the Gilligan gang and other major crime operations, the jailing for long periods of the leaders, and a very significant reduction in the level of violence. For instance in 1998 the first full year following the period of the Rainbow Government, there were just four gun murders.
We now need to see the same determination shown by the Rainbow government if we are to put this generation of criminal gangs out of business and put the leaders away for very long periods of time.
In our document today we set out a series of measures that will be taken by Labour in government to defeat the gangs. One of our key proposals is the introduction of legislation to put the Witness Protection Programme on a statutory basis and we have included a broad outline of the legislation that would be required to do this.
A statutorily based working Witness Protection Programme is now an essential part of the Garda response to the changing nature of crime – organised crime, gang warfare, drug trafficking and significant funds entering the criminal world by criminal activities such as the sale of drugs.
But, if the programme is to operate successfully, it must be reliable and effective. It must withstand charges that evidence has been bought, that prosecution witnesses are tainted or, as we now know happened in Northern Ireland, that prosecution informants have operated with impunity and committed far more crimes than their evidence may have prevented.
It is now five years since the Garda Witness Protection Programme received its first significant setback, when Paul Ward won his appeal against conviction for the murder of Veronica Guerin. And, the following year in August 2003, the Programme was strongly criticised by the Court of Criminal Appeal in the John Gilligan case. The court held that the procedures followed by the Garda Síochána compromised the evidence the two chief prosecution witnesses.
And the Supreme Court, while saying that there was no reason in law why the State could not establish a Witness Protection Programme, insisted that the terms of the Programme should be set out clearly for any participant. There should not be variations in the terms – in the offer made by the State to a former criminal accomplice – that may be, or be perceived to be, related to the giving of favourable evidence.
The Court of Criminal Appeal was quite uncompromising in its criticism. It pointed out that there was never actually a programme; that there were no clear guidelines as to what could be offered to witnesses by way of inducement to give evidence; and that the whole thing was badly thought out and developed a law of its own.
The most effective way to deal with the issues about witness protection raised by the courts, and to ensure that all possible powers are available to put major criminals behind bars for a long time, is to put the scheme on a proper statutory basis, under proper and independent oversight so as to safeguard against any claims of abuse or miscarriage of justice.
This will be a key priority for Labour in government.
Other key measures in today’s document include –
legislating to make gang membership a criminal offence, along lines already taken in the US and Canada and proposed at EU level,
reform to rules of criminal evidence in cases where living off the proceeds of crime is alleged, so that the onus is on the accused to provide a convincing reason for unexplained wealth,
a crackdown on white collar crime, including an enhanced compliance and regulatory regime for the professionals without whose assistance money laundering would not be possible,
providing the resources to have both the Criminal Assets Bureau and Garda Regional Drugs Units operational on the ground throughout the country, plugged into the local intelligence provided by an upgraded community policing system,
a reinvigorated and refunded National Drugs Strategy, to tackle the demand side of the drug issue in a coherent way.
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