It’s funny ya say that mike , I was thinking of that yesterday in the car, was driving to Navan about 0930 ish and from Athboy to aforementioned destination I counted ( dunno why) 33 cars and lorries of which ALL WERE ON MOBILES.. I saw kids in cars in front seats ( all be it buckled up) with mammies chatting on these phones… It’s begs belief really, we just don’t give a poop anymore… Ah well

Why the hell are these killers names and faces not up on every poll and newspaper across the country? Do the families of the injured party be notified?.. I believe the prisoner gets far too many rights.

In the last 14 months, the current minister has published more white papers and brought more new laws onto the statute books than any other minister for justice in the lsat 10 years combined. Apart from the open prison scandal which is legacy stuff for which Shatter can’t be blamed, he has been a very productive and effective csbinet member.

I’ve still got my mouth open at the fact that Shatter said “the Irish Prison Service cannot provide information on the number of prisoners convicted of homicide offences who had absconded from open centres and had subsequently returned.”, don’t they have computers in the prison service? What else is not being accounted for? Holy hell it’s 2012, he’s a minister, he’s responsible for the Prison Service and he can’t even give a figure? I would call that totally and utterly INEPT.

In fairness to him, the Irish Prison Service is separate to the Department of Justice since 1999 so that’s not exactly his fault.

You are right though, inept is the word for it. The same thing is to be found in An Garda Síochána and the Probation Service. Poor record-keeping, lack of computerisation and no sharing of data.

During the boom times, the Gardaí, Probation and Prison Services all set up their own separate computer systems. Because they didn’t set it up as an integrated system from the start, the Protection of Information Act means that their systems are not allowed to talk to each other. For example, if someone on probation is returned to prison, then his probation officer will not know why he has stopped showing up to prisons. Equally, if someone is required to sign in at a Garda station every morning and suddenly stops because he has been reimprisoned, the Gardaí will not know why.

There are stories of people who “go missing” for 6 months but then it turns out they were just in prison. It is ridiculous.

Why is it that the Irish are supposed to be so highly educated yet everything is run so shoddily?

Why? Five words, one attitude: “Ah sure it’ll be grand”.

He has also closed more Garda stations in 14 months than any of his predecessors Clive. He has held nobody responsible for an escaped Garda killer being placed into an open prison. He told the people who refused to register for the property charge to ‘get a life’ and the GRA conference that morale was high amongst members. If you want to judge him purely on quantity rather than quality than fair enough. I look for quality myself, a measure which I find Minister Shatter sadly lacking.

Oh I almost forgot Clive, the reason the whole escaped Garda killer inconvenience is legacy changing stuff is because Alan Shatter IS the Minister of Justice and it’s HIS responsibility. It is only right that the person whose portfolio includes responsibility for the prison service should take the blame whether directly or vicariously. He may not gave been the person who drove Martin McDermott to Loughlin House but it was under his watch. The way he handled it stank to high heaven.

they probably don’t know the names or have photos!

Only one of the prisoners is in a NI prison, the rest are actually at large

So are you saying it’s OK to give the impression that they are all at large then? My point is that the title of the article leads the reader to believe something that is not correct, i.e. Three prisoners serving sentence for homicide offences are at large.

Ouch.

James, if the headline only said that the prisoners were ‘at large’ then I’d agree with you that it could sound like they’re all roaming the streets – but it doesn’t. It explicitly uses the phrase used by Alan Shatter to describe their status, plus it’s in inverted commas to indicate that there’s some ambiguity over it because of the prisoner currently in jail in Northern Ireland.

All three are unlawfully at large, and that doesn’t imply that they’re all on the streets – it implies that they’re not in the prisons that they should be in. If the headline had said ‘Two prisoners serving sentences for homicide offences are unlawfully at large’ then it would have been inaccurate because that’s not the case, and frankly I think our readers are smart enough to understand that.

I think that’s why the “unlawfully at large” part is in inverted commas, because technically he is still at large. The article does go on to explain the specifics of that particular case and I was in no way confused by it. He is still at large because he is not in the Irish prison where he should be. The NI system will deal with him before we get him back and his his sentence is still running he is classed as “unlawfully at large”. No big deal really..

Hi Christine, thanks for your response.

Sorry if I was a little harsh in my criticism but I do believe the title could have been worded better.
For someone who has read the article, it is clear why the inverted commas are used, but for someone who hasn’t it may just look like a quote. When one first reads the title, what else could “unlawfully at large” mean to them other than AWOL?

Even on a more basic note, a title that categorises the three cases in question in the same manner is either exaggerating the case of the prisoner in NI or understating the importance of the other two. There is a big difference between two prisoners who are on the run and one who is a Northern Ireland prison awaiting transfer.

I’m not trying to be offensive, but I can’t stand sensationalist headlines (granted, even I would admit that this would be a very minor case).