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ICCJ ANNUAL LECTURE, PROFESSOR IAN O’DONNELL (University College Dublin), “STAGNATION AND CHANGE IN IRISH PENAL POLICY” 26 NOVEMBER 2007

L-R: His Honour Judge David Smith QC (Chair, ICCJ Advisory Board); Professor Kieran McEvoy (Director, ICCJ); Professor Phil Scraton; Professor Ian O’Donnell; Clare Dwyer (Assistant Director, ICCJ); Dr Pete Shirlow (Director of Postgraduate Programmes, ICCJ); Dr Graham Ellison; and Dr Shadd Maruna.
 
In November 2007 the ICCJ held its Annual Lecture. The guest speaker was Professor Ian O’Donnell the Director of the Institute of Criminology, University College Dublin.

Speaker Profile
Ian O'Donnell is professor of criminology in the School of Law at University College Dublin. Previously he was director of the Irish Penal Reform Trust and research officer at the Oxford University Centre for Criminological Research.

Ian was a Magistrate in Oxford for several years and a member of the Board of Visitors at HMP Pentonville. He has been a member of Council of Europe delegations to the Russian and Croatian prison systems and is a member of the International Penal and Penitentiary Foundation.
His most recent (co-authored) books are Child Pornography: Crime, Computers and Society (2007, Willan), Crime and Punishment in Ireland 1922 to 2003: A Statistical Sourcebook (2005, IPA), Crime, Punishment and the Search for Order in Ireland (2004, IPA), and Prison Violence: The Dynamics of Conflict, Fear and Power (2003, Willan), Criminal Justice History: Themes and Controveries from Pre-Independence Ireland (2003, Four Courts Press).
 Professor O’Donnell’s delivered a paper entitled “Stagnation and Change in Irish Penal Policy”, his observations were structured around five interrelated themes.

1. The extent to which the story of penal change in Ireland is not well understood, due to factors such as a poor information base, the embryonic nature of criminal justice research, and, until recently, a low level of crime. For these reasons the Irish experience has, by and large, escaped the criminological gaze.

2. The unusual pattern that characterises the last 10-15 years of a prison population that has risen significantly but where this cannot be read as an index of rising punitiveness or a symptom of an emerging culture of control. The apparent change conceals an underlying level of stability and this poses challenges for current explanatory frameworks.

3. There are a number of plausible explanations for the shape of the Irish prison population, such as the moderating role of expert opinion or the inhibiting effect of budgetary constraints. These are described and ruled out.

4. The work of Frank Zimring and David Johnson that appeared in 2006 in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science is developed, in particular to explore the relevance - for the Irish situation - of the leniency and severity vectors they identify.

5. The extent to which peculiarly Irish factors, such as the lack of an infrastructure for following through on political commitments, and the country's new found wealth, have put their stamp on penal arrangements.