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the court if the convicted person fails to comply with the terms of the bond, which may
include the continuance of conditions in place during the period of deferment of sentence.
There is no maximum time limit for the deferment of penalty in Ireland but O’Malley
(2000:317) suggests that a period in excess of twelve months deferment of penalty would
rarely serve any purpose. The emergence of the deferred sentence singly or in
combination with the joint supervision by the Probation Service might be considered as a
form of adaptive behaviour on behalf of the Irish Judges exercising criminal jurisdiction in
light of a distrust of discretionary practices of the Probation Service which results in the
failure to bring non-compliant offenders back to court in a timely manner (see earlier
chapter 5). The practice may also, in part, be attributed to a distrust of the Executive in
the exercise of immediate or temporary release of the prisoner (Section 2 of the Criminal
Justice Act, 1960 as amended) on the basis of representations and having regard to the
circumstances of the offender when lodged in prison. By adopting the procedure of
deferment of sentence with or without adjourned supervision, the court retains immediate
ownership of the process which is not contingent upon the discretion of either the
Prosecution or the Probation Service to re-enter appropriate cases.
Offenders with drug or alcohol addictions were identified by the judges in the survey in
particular as suitable candidates to have their sentences deferred. One judge spoke of
deferment of penaltyas a positive instrument of behavioural change as follows:
“I haven’t the slightest doubt from experience in the Drug Court that where orders
of that nature with conditions in them are supervised on a regular basis by court,
theyare more effective than if theyare simplyleft to the Probation Service to seek
compliance of it. I haven’t the slightest doubt about that…whether the courts
have time to do it or not is a separate issue…what you are doing is making the
defendant accountable to the court rather than to the Probation Service…the court
has the ultimate power to imprison the defendant, the Probation Services do not”.
A2J1DC
When the same judge was asked if the Probation Service could re-enter a case where there
was non-compliance he acknowledgedreadilythat theycouldbut claimed:
“but I don’t think the Probation Service has the same effect.”A2J1DC
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