VIOLENT CRIMES ‘SHOULD CARRY MANDATORY MINIMUM TERMS’

MANDATORY minimum sentences for violent crimes should be introduced to act as a ‘deterrent,’ a lawyer has said.

Solicitor Kieran Cleary says victims want a mandatory prison term to be applied to the accused in the wake of a violent assault and afforded ‘no reductions whatsoever’.

Speaking to the Mail, he said: ‘If a person pleads guilty then they get one fifth of the statutory sentence.

‘If they do not plead guilty and fight the case, the witnesses have to give evidence, the injured party has to give evidence, then the mandatory sentence should be the terms set down by the statute. You get the full five years, no reductions whatsoever.

‘I’m president of the Tipperary Victims of Crime Association. We’re a huge countrywide association. This is what victims want, they want a mandatory term to be applied to the accused. They don’t want this discretion of say five years for an assault – “well, I’ll give him five and give him two years off”. That’s not what they want. They want the five years.

‘Soft sentencing is a problem. It isn’t the length of the sentence; it’s not imposing the maximum sentence as set down by statute. If the legislation says five years, then it is five years, it is not two and a half years. It’s like drunk driving, if you’re convicted, mandatory, you’re off the road, that’s how to do it.

‘There are victims everywhere asking why is the offender out after two and a half years and my daughter is carrying a scar for the rest of her life, or a limp or she’s suffering from claustrophobia, she won’t go out of the house. The trauma is frightening.’