Elderly brothers beaten to death during botched burglary in Castlebar

Frank Lee Midere

OB

You are misreading my arguments. I didn't call for American incarceration rates. I was merely pointing out that your claims on fact - that prison as a deterrent doesn't work -- are wrong.

That's a failure of fact. Your failure of logic is a false dilemma. We can have more prisons, more prisoners and nicer prisons. ( With punishments within the system for bad prisoners. )

This isn't related to deferred sentences for serial offenders who have a birthday in October, or why wasn't this guy already locked up -- or my pet peeve -- concurrent sentences.

Let there be rehabilitation. But let there be people in jail getting rehabilated first.

Damien360

Frank Lee Midere wrote: »

No you aren't. Firstly you keep saying the American system doesnt work but crime has fallen for a generation. And there is huge statistical evidence that arresting people for small crimes and punishing them leads to massive reductions in overall crime. In New York serious crime has dropped by 80%.

( this happens in the midst of a drug epidemic which initially saw crime rates sky rocket).

New York had a zero tolerance approach and it worked. Around the same time as the mayor of New York was pointing out this statistic, the gardai were asked if they could do same and the most senior gardai in the force said 'no'. The reason is they would loose the community support.

If it was applied evenly to every layabout, hard worker, Garda , judge, celebrity , joe soap and was shown clearly to be applied evenly through monthly results of arrests, fines etc. it would gain acceptance.

Alas, the recent mess with the penalty points shows this would not be the case.

The sad thing is the guilty party will get free legal aid from the best of barristers and the crime of manslaughter will be applied due to intoxication. They will be out in less than 5 years to continue on with their life.

The law may be strong but justice is an ass.

JPCN1

runawaybishop wrote: »

Do you think that would actually have an effect?

He won't breed any more!

oscarBravo

Frank Lee Midere wrote: »

I was merely pointing out that your claims on fact - that prison as a deterrent doesn't work -- are wrong.

No, they're not. If prison was a deterrent, the country with the highest incarceration rates on the planet would have the lowest crime rates on the planet. It doesn't.

Let there be rehabilitation. But let there be people in jail getting rehabilated first.

That's just a restatement of your opinion that it's more important to punish people than to try to prevent them from re-offending. That's something we'll never, ever agree on, so we should probably leave it there.

dharn

Its important to remember that this man has severe psychiatric problems, it is a terrible reflection on the level of support given by the governments past and present, to the psychiatric services

Frank Lee Midere

OB

There are many factors in any country which affect criminality. Culture matters. To control for those factors you can't really compare more than one country. You have to compare what happens when country A increases its incarceration rate. If crime decreases incarceration works.

And if prison wasn't a deterrent why have laws at all?

As for rehabilitation being the prime aim of prison. Nonsense. If it were true we wouldn't penalize based on the severity of the crime but on the attitude of the criminal. Consider two thought experiments.

1) A radical green is jailed for attacking cars and industry ( happens) . He is jailed for 3 months subject to parole. At every parole he refuses to apologize or think it wrong. If rehabilitation were the aim of the system then this guy is not rehabilitated. And kept in jail.
Conversely if punishment is the aim of the system then he had served his 3 months for a nonviolent crime. Clearly punishment is the more liberal form of justice here.

2) a man who never normally drinks and rarely drives breaks that habit when his wife cheats on him. He kills 4 people but is immediately remorseful, will never drive again, is genuinely sickened by his actions. If rehabilitation were the aim he would be released. After all he has no pathological desire to kill people with cars. This isn't part if his nature. We can consider him rehabilated by his actions. Just ban him from driving.

Clearly though, justice doesn't work like that. It's based on the crime not the possibility of rehabilitation.

And none of your arguments - boilerplate leftism - relate to people who are never incarcerated at all. Which is really what we are talking about here.

oscarBravo

Frank, you're arguing with the straw man that prison should have no punishment or deterrent aspects whatsoever; you're arguing against the idea that prison's sole and only function should be rehabilitation.

Nobody has made that argument, so I'm not sure why you're arguing with it, other than because it's easier than trying to accept that I might have a point.

If the most important response to crime is punishment, then we don't have a justice system, but a vengeance system. Clearly, vengeance is more important to many people than justice, but - in my opinion - vengeance is not a hallmark of civilisation.

Finally, the idea that it's not possible to compare different countries' penal systems in order to evaluate which works best is a cop-out of the most blatant order.

Frank Lee Midere

OB

I said that rehabilitation is a tertiary component of Justice after deterrence and punishment ( you want to poison the well by calling punishment revenge. OK).

And my thought experiment still stands: a previously blameless man drinks and drives and mows down 4 people. He is immediately repentant. He is of no further threat to society; in short he is rehabilitated. If the primary aim of the justice system is rehabilitation it would free him immediately.

You skipped that argument.

With regard to the stats:if course, like in any scientific experiment you would try and reduce the number of extraneous variables. Different cultures will have different rates of criminality - probably Dublins level of absurdly low policing would work in Tokoyo or Dublin 1950, for instance -so it makes sense to stick to one country and note the changes as the country gets tougher. In particular look at New York.

And if you really think prison is not a deterrent you should oppose all incarceration. Apparently you don't.

But that's to repeat myself so I too think we are done here - at least on this argument.

oscarBravo

Frank Lee Midere wrote: »

I said that rehabilitation is a tertiary component of Justice after deterrence and punishment ( you want to poison the well by calling punishment revenge. OK).

Poisoning the well? What is the point of punishment other than vengeance? Have you read some of the vitriolic comments in this thread?

And my thought experiment still stands: a previously blameless man drinks and drives and mows down 4 people. He is immediately repentant. He is of no further threat to society; in short he is rehabilitated. If the primary aim of the justice system is rehabilitation it would free him immediately.

You skipped that argument.

I didn't skip it; I point out that it's a straw man. If the sole aim of the system is rehabilitation, he might be freed immediately. Again, neither I nor anyone else argued for a justice system where that's the sole aim.

Once again, all I want is a system that makes us safer, and not at the cost of locking up an obscene proportion of the population. If you want to use convoluted logic to convince yourself that harsh punishment is a deterrent while avoiding the uncomfortable fact that one of the only western countries with the death penalty has one of the highest murder rates in the world, knock yourself out.

Brennans Row

Addictedtogolf wrote: »

Here is his previous conviction. Obviously he is not a well guy and questions must be asked as to how he was left out.

http://www.advertiser.ie/mayo/article/17996

dharn wrote: »

Its important to remember that this man has severe psychiatric problems, it is a terrible reflection on the level of support given by the governments past and present, to the psychiatric services

Bizarrely enough even his own HSE social worker stole a Laser and a Visa credit card from his Grandmother with whom he lived with and withdrew €2,402.

You couldn't make this stuff up!

See link

Mr Cumulonimbus

oscarBravo wrote: »

What is the point of punishment other than vengeance?

Do you believe that any particular type of crime exists where the above is done in response to the perpetrator of that crime and subsequently you wouldn't view it from a negative viewpoint?

bettyl

This guy was released from portlaoise a few weeks ago. On Sunday he was arrested for shoplifting, went to court on Monday , let go and then he murdered two people on Tuesday. He should never have been out

rusheen

dharn wrote: »

Its important to remember that this man has severe psychiatric problems, it is a terrible reflection on the level of support given by the governments past and present, to the psychiatric services

I hate saying this but theres seems to be something seriously wrong with the psychiatric service in that area . This is the third time in a few years something so horrible like this has happened in Castlebar.
Lack of staff and resources maybe.

Only a few months ago it was being reported that illegal drugs were available in a psychiatric unit in Mayo .

Mayo has one of the highest suicide rates in the country.

Castlebar is a dangerous place after closing time on the weekends.
Seems to have quietened down abit in recent years mainly due to CCTV everywhere thankfully .but for years It wasn't safe to walk down main street at 2am on Friday/Saturday night .Havent seen the likes of it anywhere .

mikehammer67

bettyl wrote: »

This guy was released from portlaoise a few weeks ago. On Sunday he was arrested for shoplifting, went to court on Monday , let go and then he murdered two people on Tuesday. He should never have been out

who will be held responsible for the systems failure?

Damien360

mikehammer67 wrote: »

who will be held responsible for the systems failure?

Just like the health service nobody will be held accountable for a systems failure. It is 'get off scot free for your mistake '.

mikehammer67

i'd like to hear enda kenny or some of our TDs speak on the matter if possible

there are serious questions to be asked about why this guy was out

Hitchens

the perp should be given a fair trial..........................then he should be topped

twowheelsonly

oscarBravo wrote: »

I will completely agree with this perspective when we're breaking our societal balls to attempt to rehabilitate offenders, and not before it.

At the moment, there seems to be an attitude that if someone spent a few months crapping in a bucket in Mountjoy and committed another crime when they were let out, they are clearly fundamentally evil to the core of their being and beyond all hope of rehabilitation.

Bollox to that.

When we've tried - genuinely tried hard, with the necessary resources and attitudes carefully crafted by studying and learning from international best practice - to rehabilitate an offender, and they have squandered those opportunities, then we can start thinking about claiming that they are beyond help.

Do you actually have any idea how much effort already goes into this?

The last year that I can find Probation & Welfare figures for is 2002 when in excess of €40 million was spent on that service alone. Probably well up on €50m now.
Add in Educational facilities (Most main jails have in excess of 20 teachers and the best of facilities) Medical care, Drugs Counselling - both within jails and outside, Jobs schemes and a host of other ancillary services and you can see that a lot is being done already, and a lot of money being spent.
As I mentioned already, repeat offenders avail of these services time after time after time. When do we call stop? Enough has to be enough at some stage and those resources diverted to preventing others becoming repeaters. The threat of harsh jail - jump suits, no TV, 1 hour exercise, food and bedding only, 1 visit a month etc. might serve as a deterrent for these guys. The current Jail system certainly doesn't.

In the case of Mental Health issues, such as this seems to be, we can never do enough. A lot of these guys do genuinely need every bit of help that we can give them. As bad as the Mental Hospitals were, the Care In The Community scheme introduced a number of years ago has been totally hit and miss. Essentially the only place now for mentally ill people with criminal tendencies is Jail, rather than a secure hospital where they should be. The end result is what we're looking at now with the horrific deaths of those two pensioners.

downonthefarm

passed by the house today,very $sad to think these two men were fine strong men in their day,

Xenji

Sad to think that Jack had a staircase collapse on him on a building site over in England, he was stuck under it for 7 hours with a few other lads who all died, he saw them dying right in front of him, lost all his toes on both feet because of it and led to his speech impediment. Lovely to see all the flowers outside the house and the book of condolence was a lovely touch, gonna be the biggest funeral the town has seen between tomorrow and monday.

whitey1

oscarBravo wrote: »

You could also say that if we locked up everyone for life who ever committed any crime at all, we wouldn't have repeat offenders.

But - I don't know about you - that's not the society I want to live in. The "nail 'em up, I say!" attitude has broken the fabric of American society in a way that's going to take a very, very long time to fix. When the initial wave of anger over this atrocity has subsided, we need to have a long, hard look at what sort of country we want this to be. Do we want American rates of crime and recidivism, or Norwegian? I know what I want - I want to be safer, and (contrary to what some people are content to believe without any evidence for it) harsh penal regimes don't make for a safer society.

Oscar...just curious how long have you lived in the US? Your opinions seem to be based on very left leaning information. Ever hear, lies, damned lies and statistics?

Bobeagleburger

whitey1 wrote: »

Oscar...just curious how long have you lived in the US? Your opinions seem to be based on very left leaning information. Ever hear, lies, damned lies and statistics?

It's nausiating tbh.

Yes some states in the US give people crazy sentences for crimes that don't deserve them. It doesn't mean we here in Ireland have to be super leniant on dangerous criminals.

That's the problem with this country. The people making the calls on very important issues are completely disassociated with the actual real world, incredibly out of touch

irishgeo

rusheen wrote: »

I hate saying this but theres seems to be something seriously wrong with the psychiatric service in that area . This is the third time in a few years something so horrible like this has happened in Castlebar.
Lack of staff and resources maybe.

Only a few months ago it was being reported that illegal drugs were available in a psychiatric unit in Mayo .

Mayo has one of the highest suicide rates in the country.

Castlebar is a dangerous place after closing time on the weekends.
Seems to have quietened down abit in recent years mainly due to CCTV everywhere thankfully .but for years It wasn't safe to walk down main street at 2am on Friday/Saturday night .Havent seen the likes of it anywhere .

I have never felt unsafe in Castlebar. To be honest lately I have seen more violence in Westport than Castlebar on a night out.

Xenji

rusheen wrote: »

Castlebar is a dangerous place after closing time on the weekends.
Seems to have quietened down abit in recent years mainly due to CCTV everywhere thankfully .but for years It wasn't safe to walk down main street at 2am on Friday/Saturday night .Havent seen the likes of it anywhere .

I have worked in bars for years in the town and do not think it unsafe at all for a night out, hardly seen any violence at all, and would usually always go out when I finished work around 2 in the morning and walk home after.

This town is unsafe at the moment due to all the families that got relocated down here breaking into houses and up to a few months ago threatening and mugging kids outside of the secondary schools, they are also professional shoplifters that have led to premises having to hire security guards or close down.

gigantic09

A severe prison sentence as well as punishing a perpetrator of a serious crime also should act as a deterrent to somebody else involved in criminal activities from carrying out a similar act in the future.
Where a person has severe mental issues, the onus should be on the state to insure as much as possible he/she is prohibited from carrying out serious crime.
Rehabilitation while desirable should not be the primary objective of prison in my opinion.I know if any friend/relative of mine was a victim of a crime such as happened those two men then i would not give a flying f*&^ if they were rehabilitated or not.I would demand they were not permitted to be part of normal society again.ever.

downonthefarm

I find it a bit hypocritical on Kenny's part to be condemning this in one breath then ramming through the abortion thing in the next

Mickeroo

downonthefarm wrote: »

I find it a bit hypocritical on Kenny's part to be condemning this in one breath then ramming through the abortion thing in the next

Abortion has nothing to do with this and I don't see why anyone would bring it into the discussion.

michael999999

gigantic09 wrote: »

A severe prison sentence as well as punishing a perpetrator of a serious crime also should act as a deterrent to somebody else involved in criminal activities from carrying out a similar act in the future.
Where a person has severe mental issues, the onus should be on the state to insure as much as possible he/she is prohibited from carrying out serious crime.
Rehabilitation while desirable should not be the primary objective of prison in my opinion.I know if any friend/relative of mine was a victim of a crime such as happened those two men then i would not give a flying f*&^ if they were rehabilitated or not.I would demand they were not permitted to be part of normal society again.ever.

We had a case here this week where a man convicted of burglary, with 80 previous convictions. Had he's prison term put off till October, so he could celebrate he's birthday.

The judiciary are also a major factor with what's going wrong with crime in this country. The guards arrest and charge them, only for some judge living in he's gated mansion with garda protection to let them back on the streets again!

The judges of this country don't seem to have any idea what's going on inthe real world!

rusheen

Xenji wrote: »

I have worked in bars for years in the town and do not think it unsafe at all for a night out, hardly seen any violence at all, and would usually always go out when I finished work around 2 in the morning and walk home after.
.

This town is unsafe at the moment due to all the families that got relocated down here breaking into houses and up to a few months ago threatening and mugging kids outside of the secondary schools, they are also professional shoplifters that have led to premises having to hire security guards or close down.

Thats great its changed in recent times , CCTV must be doing its job , great they got it installed .
During the 00s main street/bridge st around a certain chipper wasn't a good place to be afterhours

Cllr Ger Deere (Fine Gael) said he had heard rumours going around and looked into them.
“There’s a myth going around that certain people are being put into Castlebar. I checked into it with various housing authorities and no one has been transplanted from any part of the country of the calibre you’re talking about. This myth needs to be nipped in the bud, it is entirely untrue,” he said.
Printed in a local newspaper on 25 June 2013

Hitchens

rusheen wrote: »

Cllr Ger Deere (Fine Gael) said he had heard rumours going around and looked into them.
“There’s a myth going around that certain people are being put into Castlebar. I checked into it with various housing authorities and no one has been transplanted from any part of the country of the calibre you’re talking about. This myth needs to be nipped in the bud, it is entirely untrue,” he said.
Printed in a local newspaper on 25 June 2013

well, if the man said it.......it must be true :rolleyes: