Adults who groom children into crime face five years in jail
ADULTS who groom children to carry out criminal activity will face up to five years in jail under new legislation being introduced today.
The Justice Department said that the new law will for the first time create specific offences where an adult compels, coerces, induces or invites a child to engage in criminal activity.
The development comes after a number of specialised studies into the problem. One 2019 report into drug dealing and organised crime in Dublin’s south inner city found children as young as 12 years old being induced into gangs.
The new law will complement the work of the Greentown Project, which published a report in December 2016 outlining how the influence of criminal networks increases the level of offending by a small number of children and entraps them in offending situations. Under the new law, a child does not need to be successful in carrying out a crime for an adult to be convicted.
Justice Minister Helen McEntee intends that the offence of grooming a child into criminal activity will be prosecutable as a completely separate offence to any crime committed by the adult using the child as their agent.
She said: “We must tackle crime at all levels and in all areas of our society – from stopping the gang bosses committing the most awful crimes to preventing them leading our young into a life of crime.
“Rooting crime out of our communities means we must show criminals that we are deadly serious about ensuring they cannot exploit our young for their own ends. We are equally serious about ensuring that crime does not pass down through generations.
“Breaking the link between criminal gangs and the vulnerable young people they try to recruit will be essential if we are to divert young people away from lives of crime.
“This legislation will further seek to protect children from being drawn into a life of criminality, with all the potential lifetime consequences that entails, and to further disrupt the activity of criminals within our communities.”
The Justice Department says that targeted interventions are to be piloted to protect children in Ireland from becoming involved in criminal networks as part of the University of Limerick’s ongoing Greentown Project, as well as analysis of how crime gangs recruit and control often vulnerable children.
Ms McEntee said the project’s work and other youth justice initiatives would be “strengthened and developed” in a new Justice Youth strategy. In the coming weeks, the department will publish a report into the effects and causes the ongoing Drogheda feud has had on communities in the Co Louth town.
Ms McEntee says that she will also work with Dublin City Council to implement the Jack Nolan report on the Darndale area of Dublin which makes recommendations related to crime prevention and dismantling gangs.