Principles of sentencing: some recent developments

• Author: Tom O'Malley
• Position: B.A.(NUI), M.A.(NUI), LL.B.(NUI), LL.M.(Yale), B.L. Senior Lecturer in Law, NUI, Galway
• Pages: 51-64

PRINCIPLES OF SENTENCING: SOME

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

TOM O’MALLEY*

I. INTRODUCTION

For the historian of modern Irish sentencing law, the

first and last decades of the 20th century are by far the most

interesting. In fact, it is tempting to say that little happened in

between. The early years of the century witnessed profound

policy and legislative changes in the treatment of both child

and adult offenders, changes that were reflected in the

Probation of Offenders Act 1907, the Children Act 1908 and

the Prevention of Crime Act 1908.1 These developments were

influenced in large measure by the work of those positivist

criminologists who had sought, by use of scientific methods,

to show that crime, like other human behaviour, was often the

product of factors outside the actor’s control.2 The last

decade of the 20th century brought a renewed energy in

sentencing reform, though this time the emphasis was on

severity rather than leniency, as is evident from the terms of

the Criminal Justice Acts of 1993 and 1999 and, more

recently, the Sex Offenders Act, 2001. However, the closing

years of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st have

also witnessed a growing and welcome tendency on the part

of the Superior Courts to issue detailed and thoughtful

judgments on sentencing principles. This article deals with

two of those judgments, Finn3 and Redmond,4 both of which

2001] Developments in Sentencing 51

4 Court of Criminal Appeal, unreported, Hardiman J., 21 December,

3 Supreme Court, unreported, Keane C.J., 24 November, 2000.

2 See Vold, Bernard and Snipes, Theoretical Criminology (4th ed., 1998),

particularly Chapters 3 to 7.

1 See Garland, Punishment and Welfare: A History of Penal Strategies.

* B.A.(NUI), M.A.(NUI), LL.B.(NUI), LL.M.(Yale), B.L. Senior

Lecturer in Law, NUI, Galway.