This system of violence will only get worse
IT almost happened. We almost went a week without a violent death. Alas, the death of a 46-year-old Kilkenny man last Friday morning ensured there would be no respite, no let up in the unrelenting chaos and carnage which has come to represent modern Ireland.
Yet because the incident in question appears to be of a domestic nature, a crime of passion rather than a premeditated, callous killing, it will go under the radar.
And why wouldn’t it? Because when you’ve spent the last couple of weeks reading about a teenager dismembered over a gang dispute, a student having his throat slashed with a box-cutter, and a homeless man having his limbs severed, a run-of-the-mill fatal assault warrants only a passing interest.
That’s the reality of it. We are slowly becoming inured to the kind of violence which would have horrified us a few short years ago. Now, unless it’s an execution-style killing, a gangland hit with all the trimmings, it barely registers.
Between 2005 and 2015 there were 201 gun-related deaths in this country. To put that into context there were 454 gun deaths in Great Britain during the same period. To put that into further context the Central Statistics Office (CSO) says the number of homicides reported between 2003 and 2016 was underestimated by approximately 18% meaning that some 234 deaths went unreported in that period.
And those were just the gun deaths. Yet because of the chronic lack of housing, the hospital waiting lists, the patients on trolleys, the homeless children, and the repeated, concerted attempts to denigrate their rivals, the issue of crime was pushed to the margins during the build-up to the General Election.
Instead, rather than explain why the country has become ravaged by violence, those in pursuit in power pointed to historical, unsolved crimes - using them as weapons with which to beat their opponents.
Not once was the issue of sentencing raised, nor the parlous state of our prisons; the overcrowded, decaying relics in which petty criminals learn new skills to put to bad use upon their release, neither rehabilitated nor reformed.
And therein lies the kicker. As a liberal country, with lenient sentencing, one would assume that those convicted of crimes - those who say, kill someone, and are released from prison less than a decade later - undergo a radical reprogramming in an institution designed specifically for their needs.
No. They are thrown into one of the dozen or so buildings we use to contain our criminals; one of which was built in this century, two in the 1800s.
That’s if they’re imprisoned at all. Because space is at a premium in these refined establishments. One need only read the goings-on of your local District Court to know that.
Every city, town, county and village has them, usually has dozens of them, the guy or gal with multiple previous convictions, a rap sheet the length of your arm, scores, nay hundreds, of previous convictions, petty crimes; robberies, assaults, criminal damage, possession with intent.
And the judge, hands tied by the system, sends he or she on their way, ‘final warning, if I see you here again there’s no telling what I’ll do.’
It is within this environment that those responsible for the murder of Keane Mulready-Woods have emerged, via a judicial system akin to a perverse joke, one offering little deterrent for the individual committed to a life of crime.
Is it any surprise this generation has scant regard for the law? And until they learn the true meaning of penitence nothing will change.