The crime issue is a paradox in this election. Pollafter poll placed it close to the top of the electorate's list of concerns. Pundits and commentators agreed it would be a serious issue on the doorsteps. But competing policies and claims have failed to engage public thinking during the campaign.
A number of factors have contributed to this. There has been a fall in recorded offences in recent months as the Garda has applied more pressure to known criminals. Moreover, crime is something which the citizen is happy to forget when it does not obtrude itself into public consciousness. The main parties seem to be offering much the same approach, albeit in different terminology. Everyone will be tough on the criminal, will put an end to the revolving door syndrome in the prisons and will put more gardai to work.
The citizen has heard it all before and is unimpressed. None of it ever seems to increase the likelihood of getting a patrolling garda on one's street or having one's stolen goods retrieved. There is a sense of helplessness which is not alleviated by any party's promises or claims. For the most part, they seem to cancel each other out.
Fianna Fail did a signal service by raising the concept of zero tolerance. Whether or not one supports the idea, the proposal from John O'Donoghue set in motion an important debate which had not hitherto taken place. What does the public want of its criminal justice system, its police, its prisons, its courts? What ought to be our objectives as a society in these areas? His proposal was quickly followed by Nora Owen's Discussion Paper on Criminal Justice which marked the first serious attempt by any Minister for Justice to set out policy objectives and options.
For the first time, the debate on crime was raised beyond the empty banalities of promising more squad cars, better equipment and more guards on the beat. Nora Owen recognised the necessity of a research based approach to crime as well as practical measures on the ground and that approach has been emulated in a thoughtful policy document, including the establishment of a commission on crime, from the Progressive Democrats.
Events forced other positive developments. There is to be an independent prisons authority and a separate agency to run the courts. A strategic management initiative is focusing on the way the Garda Siochana operates and some important structural changes are in train for the force. The most serious shortcoming in all of these processes is that the concept of an independent Garda authority is not on anyone's policy agenda. A long as the force is under direct political control it will never serve the public as it might.
Where should the concerned citizen best place his or her trust on polling day? Nora Owen is unlikely to return to the Department of Justice one way or another. But if she did, her discussion paper would be a good blueprint for the future. As against that, she would have something less than the enthusiastic support of Labour and Democratic Left who between them have not a goose's inkling of modern criminal justice thinking. For all that Fianna Fail has failed fully to expand it, the main opposition party has at least raised the debate from mindless rhetoric to its present, modest level of development. They are entitled to credit and votes for that.