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The Irish Probation Service was completely underdeveloped before 1970, as previously
noted, with no Probation Officer outside of Dublin (Kilcommins et al 2004: 52). Crucially,
the sentencing aims expounded by the Court of Criminal Appeal in O’Driscoll, while
expressing clearly what the object of sentencing might be, failed to identify a suitable
vehicle within the penal system to facilitate the redemption or rehabilitation of the
offender. If the Court of Criminal Appeal intended the use of the term “redeem” in a
purelyreligious sense the prison service did provide the chaplaincyservice which in certain
individual cases may have achieved the desired change in the offender. However, for the
prison population as a whole the high rates of recidivism would appear to suggest that the
desired incidence of redemption in offenders as envisaged bythe Court of Criminal Appeal
didnot come about.
If the term redeem as used by the Court of Criminal Appeal was intended to mean a
facilitated rehabilitation through an agency of the State such as the Prison Service then the
Courts were effectively asked to sentence in a vacuum by reference to facilities or
programmes which did not exist. As previously mentioned the effectiveness of a fine is
negated by the non-collection of that fine and indeed the knowledge by an offender that a
fine is unlikely to be collected at all. Young suggests it only makes sense to discuss the
philosophical bases of a sentence in terms of the aims for which it is imposed (Young
1979; 34). The stated aim of imprisonment in the Report on Prisons and Places of
Detention (1981) as mentioned was “to contain offenders”. This in many respects runs
counter to the stated aim of sentencing by the Court of Criminal Appeal in O’Driscoll to
allowthe accuseda chance of redemption. 31
Internationally, the rehabilitative function of the prison was under critical challenge since
the mid-1970s particularly the use of rehabilitative programmes for prisoners with
indeterminate sentences (Martinson 1974). In the U.K., the Report on the Prison Service
(1979) states that the purpose of imprisonment was to provide a place of custody which
was secure but which would also provide such vocational facilities to make incarceration
tolerable.
The influence of the Wootton Report on official deliberations in Ireland prior to the
introduction of community service strongly suggested that community service would
31 The extent to which Irish courts at present give prominence to rehabilitation as an aimof sentencingmayhave shiftedanumber of degrees in favour of proportionate sentences which
include rehabilitation but also include elements of desert andavoidance of risk.
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