Research
You will find a complete range of our peer-reviewed monographs, multi-authored and edited works, including original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
This chapter provides an overview of sentencing outcomes resulting in 15 years’ imprisonment up to (and including) life imprisonment in sexual offence cases decided over more than three decades in Ireland (from 1985 to 2022: n=108). The analysis sheds light on judicial perceptions of what constitutes the most serious and aggravated version of these offences in a sentencing system where judicial discretion is wide. The volume of offending being dealt with at each sentencing hearing was a key factor in imposing a sentence of this severity. In cases involving offences committed against adult victims, the perpetrators were all male, the offending involved serious levels of violence and the perpetrator was often a stranger to the victim. In cases of child sexual abuse, the offending commenced when the child or children were of a young age and multiple offences were committed over a prolonged period. The role of judges and the environment within which they operate is also explored as a factor that may impact sentencing choices.
This concluding chapter discusses how a small group of cases at the apex of seriousness in the sexual offence category provided an opportunity to explore patterns in sentencing and the factors influencing sentencing outcomes. The meaning of the consistency evident in these cases is discussed and the importance of engaging in broad and holistic approaches in understanding sentencing is emphasised.
The sentence selected by a judge and how it is constructed has a material impact on its meaning and the reality of time served in custody. This chapter deconstructs the different rules and judicial practices that shape a sentencing judge’s decision to impose a determinate sentence or a sentence of life imprisonment. What is clear from the analysis is that judges were consistent in reserving sentences of this severity for multi-offence cases. In the majority of multi-offence cases judges ordered the sentences for each offence to run concurrently rather than consecutively. In imposing a determinate sentence, judges mostly stayed within a numerical band of 15 to 20 years imprisonment. Post-release supervision orders were imposed where the offender was viewed as being a risk of reoffending. When selecting life imprisonment, the indeterminate nature of the sentence and its capacity to act as a mechanism to control the risk of reoffending was a factor in some cases.
This chapter shifts the focus onto the individuals making sentencing decisions and the environment within which they operate. A small group of judges are responsible for these decisions and this contributes to an understanding of the consistency evident in these cases. The influence of the ‘practical wisdom’ of judges is explored alongside a discussion of the use of emotive language employed in sentencing remarks. Judges operate within a sentencing ecosystem and their decisions are shaped and influenced by other actors, agencies, structures and institutions. A significant number of these sentences were appealed and this also had an impact on the final sentence outcomes. In appeals against the severity of sentence, 50 per cent were reduced on appeal. The dynamics between sentencing judges and the appellate courts is also explored as well as the impact of macro-level influences, such as the legislature, media and politics.
This chapter examines the evolution of the principles of sentencing in Ireland and how these principles are applied in practice. The discretion of sentencing judges operates within the confines of the principle of proportionality, as well as an ever-evolving ‘sentencing canon’ of judgments. The most important development in the last number of decades has been the shift towards the issuance of sentencing guidance. These judgments set out sentencing bands reflective of the seriousness of the offence and detail the factors of relevance for each of these bands. The sentencing band of 15 years to life imprisonment is of the greatest interest here, as this book seeks to examine the factors that influence judges to impose a sentence of this severity in practice.
This chapter examines cases where sentences of 15 years to life imprisonment have been imposed by judges for sexual offences committed against adult victims in Ireland from 1985 to 2022 (n=45). The cases involved serious levels of violence including death threats and the use of weapons, the resultant impact of which was a high degree of harm to the victim(s). Multiple offences were often committed during the course of a single incident and this was a significant factor in the selection of sentence. The gendered nature of sexual offending was evident as the offenders subject to a sentence of 15 years to life imprisonment were all men and the victims were all women. The previous criminal history and the risk of reoffending was referenced as a factor in the sentencing remarks of judges. ‘Stranger’ rapes committed against young women in public places was a prominent fact pattern in cases resulting in sentences of this severity. This pattern appears to have some parallels with cultural (and prejudicial) beliefs known as ‘rape myths’. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the relevance of the ‘real rape’ myth as a potential factor that may be influencing sentencing outcomes.
This chapter examines cases where sentences of 15 years to life imprisonment have been imposed by judges for sexual offences committed against child victims in Ireland from 1985 to 2022 (n=63). The factors that influenced sentencing outcomes in the upper range of the penalty included the age of the victim, the relationship between the parties, the prolonged period of offending, the number of offences, the number of victims and the use of special violence, degradation and humiliation. These crimes were frequently perpetrated by a family, most notably a father or step-father to the victim(s). All of the cases involved multiple sexual offences. Mitigating factors were evident in some cases but their impact on sentence reduction was often limited. Many victims disclosed their experiences of abuse to the Gardaí in adulthood. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the social and legal barriers that may impact the likelihood of these cases coming before the courts.
Addressing a lack of high-quality sentencing information in Ireland, this important book explores the factors that influence judges to impose a sentence of long-term imprisonment in sexual offence cases.
Judges have made it clear that sentences of 15 years to life imprisonment are to be reserved for offending that is ‘truly egregious’. Griffin, using over 100 serious sexual offence cases, examines what this means in practice. The book is designed to be used in the classroom and the court, as well as providing a solid evidence base to inform the public and policy discourse on sentencing.
The prison abolition movements have reinvigorated debate on the left about the function of carceral estates in maintaining class and racial differences under late capitalism. In this chapter we argue that, viewed through a critical colonial lens, abolitionism is only meaningful if it engages with decolonizing, as well as abolitionist currents and impulses in the Global South. For Indigenous peoples, the carceral gulag has always been a ‘place of exception’ where penal and non-penal sites meshed together in the pursuit of colonial, rather than disciplinary, objectives. We maintain that prison in the contemporary colony should be viewed as part of an archipelago of camps existing to extinguish Indigenous sovereignty. We employ Agamben’s particular turn on the ‘camp’ – ‘the space that is opened up when the state of exception begins to become the rule’ (Agamben, 1998) to explore the ways in which its logic underpins settler colonial interventions across time and space to create dispossessed rather than simply ‘docile’ subjects in the Foucauldian sense.
The downturn of the influence of centralized media systems has led to a renewed resurgence in critical challenges to state power, including punitive power. Critical work on police and penal brutality as well as movements such as ‘defund the police’ are directly linked to the loss of power by the mass media. Counterhegemonic activism has rarely been as strong as it is today, and this strength brings institutional efforts to defend centralized meaning making. This chapter explores the labelling approach and social problems sociology, and the role of the media in them. While the classical labelling approach had conceptualized media as a tool to distribute social meaning, the decentralization of media has now become a target of major moral panics, hindering and denouncing activism and counterhegemonic strife.
