White Paper on Crime

14th April 2010

The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform has committed to publishing a White Paper on Crime in 2011. 

The purpose of a White Paper is succinctly outlined on the Department's website:

A White Paper provides a high level statement of Government policy, its rationale and the strategies to give effect to that policy. Development of the White Paper on Crime involves an end-to-end examination of the prevention, intervention and enforcement strategies to combat crime.

Public consultation is a critical and ongoing part of this process, and submissions are invited from members of the public and other interested parties on the issues raised in the discussion documents. As such IPRT has been actively involved in presenting submissions to the various documents released as part of the process. The IPRT's initial response to the White Paper process is available above.

The First Discussion Document dealt with the issue of Crime Prevention and Community Safety, and IPRT duly sent its submission on the matter (available above).

At present, the Second Discussion Document is in circulation. The purpose of the second discussion document is to set out the current range of sanctions applied in Ireland and to ask:

• What role should sanctions play as part of an overall response to crime?
• How well is the existing approach to sanctions and sentencing working to prevent and reduce crime?
• How should policy in this area best be developed and implemented?

Read more:

• Read the First Discussion Document here.
• Read the Overview of Submissions to the First Document here.
• Read the Second Discussion Document here.

We will be updating this page with our submissions as the process progresses.