56,000 NO-SHOWS FOR COURT DATES
MORE than 56,000 bench warrants have had to be issued by the country’s District Courts in the last three years for people who failed to show up in court.
The figures obtained by the Irish Daily Mail show a worryingly high level of no-shows by suspected thieves and drug offenders.
A small number of people accused of sex assaults have also failed to show for their cases, the data shows.
Fianna Fáil TD and justice campaigner Jim O’Callaghan last night expressed concern at the extent of the no-shows, and the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre said defendants who shun their court cases draw out the agony for victims. DRCC director Noeline Blackwell said she was
more worried about the bench warrants not executed – believed to number in their thousands every year.
Of the more than 56,000 bench warrants issued between 2016 and this year, some 9,000 were issued for people accused of theft. Thousands more related to drug charges – many which never lead to the person being arrested and brought to court.
Fianna Fáil justice spokesman Mr O’Callaghan stressed the importance of bench warrants in helping to prevent crime.
He told the Mail: ‘Bench warrants are an essential part of the criminal justice system.
‘Without them people can ignore or evade the law. The fact that 56,000 bench warrants have been issued in the past three years is worrying.’
Mr O’Callaghan added: ‘Anyone failing to obey a court summons must know that the court system will not allow their failure to go undetected. It is essential that bench warrants are acted upon by the gardaí and that people failing to obey the law are brought before the courts.’
Using a Freedom of Information request, the Mail obtained bench warrant figures for every one of the dozens of crime categories that go through the District Court each year.
The latest figures show that in 2016, 17,227 bench warrants were issued, rising to 19,866 in 2017 and 18,998 warrants for the first ten months of this year. The 2018 figure is, however, expected to top the 20,000 mark.
The shocking figures, compiled by the Irish Courts Service, show that last year 708 people were issued with bench warrants for charges related to ‘criminal damage’; 1,659 for having no insurance; 2,900 for theft; and 1,387 for threatening behaviour in a public place. From 2016 to this year, there have been 8,817 bench warrants issued for theft offences; 21 warrants issued for sexual assault offences; and more than 2,000 warrants issued for people failing to show up for court who were caught driving a car without a current licence.
Most of the bench warrants issued by the courts every year relate to drink-driving offences and other road traffic and public order cases, though a significant level deal with criminal damage, drugs and theft offences.
Most are issued after an application from a garda who discovers that a defendant has not shown up in court. However, gardaí do not act on thousands of bench warrants each year. In 2014, over 31,000 bench warrants went unexecuted – many of them from previous years.
The backlog of unexecuted older warrants is something that ‘urgently’ needs to be addressed, senior security sources say.
The Courts Service notes that a person may have more than one bench warrant for the same case for the same year, and that this would only be documented as one bench warrant.
On average, eight or nine bench warrants are being issued annually for sexual assault.
Ms Blackwell, director of Dublin’s Rape Crisis Centre, said: ‘It’s an important part of the prosecution that the charge is brought and that the person accused turns up to answer their charge, and of course bench warrants are the way in which our service manages it.
‘The bigger things for us would be looking at the delay sometimes
‘Backlog needs to be addressed’
‘Has to be done expeditiously’
in bringing these kind of offences to the court. The whole prosecution of these crimes when they happen needs to be done expeditiously. The court needs to take whatever steps they need to, to ensure people turn up to face their charges. It doesn’t tell us anything about how many bench warrants aren’t issued.’
Fianna Fáil is pushing ahead with proposals to deny bail to repeat offenders, citing official figures which show a doubling in offences committed by people on bail over the last five years.
The Bail (Amendment) Bill 2017, proposed by TD and barrister Mr O’Callaghan, would oblige judges to refuse bail in serious offence cases, where the court is satisfied it is necessary to prevent further offences being carried out. The figure for criminals committing offences while on bail has doubled from 4,777 in 2013 to 9,519 in 2017.
In March, Opposition parties heavily criticised Government spin doctors for suggesting that the gardaí could increase the number of bench warrant arrests while the Government was releasing its new crime strategy.
The Social Democrats said at the time that the proposal was ‘jaw-dropping’ and that gardaí should act on bench warrants to reduce crime, not to make the Taoiseach look good. At the time, the Justice Department insisted gardaí did not act on the bench warrant backlog just to make the Government look good.
IT is standard practice in the District Court that when someone is summonsed to appear, but fails to do so, the judge issues a bench warrant for that person’s arrest. What ought not to be standard, however, is that our District Court judges find themselves doing this so very often – 56,000 times in three years.
But as the court figures revealed today in the Irish Daily Mail show, year after year, thousands of people, many of them accused of serious crimes, simply don’t bother showing up in court.
Fianna Fáil justice spokesman Jim O’Callaghan describes the figures as ‘worrying’, saying: ‘Anyone failing to obey a court summons must know that the court system will not allow their failure to go undetected’.
Mr O’Callaghan is, of course, absolutely correct. But as well as not going undetected, their failure to appear ought not to go unpunished. In the past three years, 9,000 bench warrants were issued in the cases where people were charged with theft.
Undoubtedly there are genuine cases where emergencies happen and people can’t turn up for their court date. But the figure of 56,000 emergencies in three years is not credible. And in each case where a bench warrant has to be issued, not only are the resources of the court wasted, but there is also a tremendous waste of Garda time. Officers will have made themselves available to the court to give evidence in many of these cases. And then it falls to gardaí to prosecute these bench warrants, a use of Garda time that could be better spent if people simply showed up.
In the case of drug offences, it seems almost routine that many accused of these crimes find themselves with ‘something better to do’ than meet their appointment with justice. The message, however, ought to be clear. You don’t have something better to do. And if you can’t make it, you will face serious consequences.