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Seamus Breathnach's Irish-criminology.com examines Irish society through its norm-creating as well as its norm-breaking agencies. These include the Church controls of Ireland's State -- its Schools, Law, Police, Courts, Prisons, Media and much more...
1.) Irish Criminology
1a.) Ag a' Baile
(Agallamh ag an udar leis fein
i bfhoirm Qs-agus-A's idir Sean agus Seamus)
1b.) Raison d'Etre
Nil ach aidhm amhain ag cursai coireolaiochta na h-Eireann – 'se sin
an sochai ina maireann muid a iniuchadh agus a thuiscint. Ceaptar
coitianta go mbaineann an choireolaiocht leis na Gardai Siochana
amhain, leis na Cuirteanna, leis na Priosuin agus leis an dli
choiriuil. Baineann -- ach ni h-ionann san is a ra nach bfuil rud faoi
leith a chomead na h-institutidi seo le cheile. Ceard e?
About Irish Criminology
This web site is provided primarily for the pleasure of Mr. Seamus
Breathnach. It is essentially a discourse between Mr. Breathnach and
himself (between me and myself) concerning the people and the
institutions which, invited and non-invited alike, invade and frame
his environment. Needless to say, talking to oneself begins in the
personal realms of fado fado. And in the author's case it began long
before he acted as Director of Criminological Studies at the CDVEC
(City of Dublin Vocational Education Committee, Rathmines, Dublin)
where he lectured in Postgraduate Criminology between 1982 and 2002.
In the early eighties the author contracted with the late Jim Hickey
(College of Commerce, Rathmines), and, later on, DIT (the Dublin
Institute of Technology, Rathmines), to research some of the more
prominent concerns in Irish Criminology, and to make such researches
available to students. And to some extent the present website, despite
the unfortunate direction taken by DIT later on, is done in partial
fulfilment of that relationship.
However much the needs of students have moulded the contents of the
Diploma Course in Postgraduate Criminology and, derivatively, the
contents of this web site, other forces – too numerous to mention –
have also played an influential part.
(Hereafter, rather than use the personal pronoun, 'I', I would rather
refer to myself as 'The author of this website' or simply 'The
The author has had experience as a member of the Garda Siochana, as a
journalist and as a lawyer. In a long career he acknowledges his debt
to others, some from the North, some from the South, some who served
in Her Majesty's Forces, émigré Irishmen, Danish collectives, Danish
women, ordinary English men and women (would-be writers) who, at one
time gathered around the Automobile Association, Leicester Square;
Carlovian ex-pats in London (also writers and artists); and a host of
influences picked up along life's highway. The author also practised
criminal law as a Barrister for some considerable time before yielding
to more primary passions, which drove him more and more into the
social sciences. These experiences have no doubt also served to shape
the contents as well as the tone of this website.
Undoubtedly, it was the needs of students – which, over a span of
twenty years, have had the greatest input into this Website. Unlike
Pulpit and Parliament – or even the Courts – the school room has to
satisfy questions by reference to quantitative as well as qualitative
answers, by reference to fact as well as to theory – and it is these
requirements that have had the greatest influence on this Website.
Gathering notes and sifting data is a long process, and the ensuing
products have to be off-loaded somewhere. Most of the books,
articles and items on this Website are compiled from the author's
personal notes – notes such as one might use in a lecture to defeat a
prejudice or point up a moral.
Of course this is not to say that non-students or curious others
interested in things either' criminal' or 'Irish' will not find
something useful on this site to amuse them. One hopes they do. In the
service of Irish Criminology this website has one primary aim – to
study Irish society; and through the medium of its criminal and penal
institutions, to know it critically and to describe it fearlessly, its
history, its composition, its values, its goals, its capacities and
the reproduction of those systemic values. Without losing sight of the
whole one must question Ireland's pre-disposition to tolerance and
intolerance, its values and its received values, its conditioned
capacity for cruelty and kindness, its superstitions and dogmas, its
gullibility as well as its capacity for science, its central structure
and, above all, that centre's dispersion of powers,
Perhaps one of the peculiar things about Irish society is the manner
in which it attracts grand theory. It is probably unique among
European countries in this regard. Although keen to wear the
superficial glitz of a successful EEC and EU member, being so
homogeneously Catholic as well as so ineffably small, Ireland can be
seen to be more at home with grand theory than any lesser or partial
set of explanatory values. A bit like phosphorous in water, Ireland
can best be conceived as a island that has been submerged in toto for
at least a thousand years in the ocean of its own religious devotion
and has only resurfaced in the late twentieth century to the growl of
the Celtic Tiger. It's resurfaced self, however, is not too different
than what was submerged in the middle ages.
Be that as it may, the great bearers of the social values we wish to
examine, including those arising from custom, music, dancing,
religion, history and law, etc. are easier identified the more
homogeneous the society in question is. Unfortunately, the more
homogeneous or simple a society is, the easier it is for selected and
determined groups, to divert and influence it. It is even possible for
a determined group to appropriate such a society and even reproduce
its own core values by identifying society's values with its own.
Indeed, in a very simple society, one that is hardly settled or has
reduced its reflections to writing, a very small group of people if
organised -- even on the basis that it outlives any single lifespan --
can take control of the whole; for most people in simply organised
societies rarely contemplate outliving themselves, at least not in an
action-oriented way. And when they do consider that which survives
them, they fear it and revere it. Religious or corporate groups,
therefore, have an advantage far in excess of ordinary individuals and
their simple concerns, even when those religious or corporate groups
are small in number.
One thing, which needs to be mentioned above all others – and cannot
be repeated often enough – is this: mere personal logic will not
suffice to penetrate or understand the nature and actions of a
corporate body. This we shall focus upon more fully later, but for the
moment it is well to realise that the logic of persons is not the
logic of groups. If one reflects upon what happens when one meets
another person simpliciter, one knows that something happens in the
interaction. Morality, it appears, begins when two people meet. When
three or four or ten or fifty people meet, or meet towards a definite
end, the will of the individual is curtailed on all sides, depending
upon the group, the agenda, and the energies invested. The logic,
therefore, of the diminished individual does not accord with the logic
of group-needs and requirements. So what is needed to comprehend the
logic of such corporations or societies is a new logic, a socio-logic,
which has important – but not exhaustive -- boundaries at the national
It was Nicolo Machiavelli, rather than August Comte or Rousseau, who
first understood the limitations of personal logic. When the prudent
adviser (Machiavelli) informs The Prince that because he is Prince,
and because he has many things outside his person to consider, his
honesty (or, what is much the same thing, his logic) cannot be
reconciled any more with that of the simple individual citizen – not
if he means to keep his kingdom. In other words, the ordinary pious
aspirations of individuals, depends to a great extent on their
property, their concerns, their politics, their place in the religious
and political life of the community. These matters will, as with the
Prince, reflect their status and interests in that society and will
motivate their morality with respect to those interests, those to whom
they will gravitate, and the statements they will accordingly make.
Their logic, then, can be seen to differ from that of the simple
individual, who by definition is not as organised (belonging to
groups) as others and, indeed, may approximate an abstraction or
worse, a nuisance, the more unorganised he is.
Before leaving this subject, let me en passant recommend Machiavelli's
The Prince to those who wish to appreciate the limits of personal
Armed with this insight, we can now say that Ringy, Jack Lynch, Mick
Mackey and Jimmy Doyle were great hurlers, but none (or all) of them
was the GAA. Ringy could not even speak for the Cork team (except when
he turned selector). And Jack Lynch had more say in the government of
his day than he had in determining who on the Cork team should take
the free pucks. And though Tipperary advisers were always wise to
delegate Jimmy Doyle as their number one sharp shooter, even if it
seemed like a foregone conclusion, it was nevertheless a logical
conclusion arrived at by the selectors and not by Jimmy Doyle
personally. Similarly, in all other fields, the logic of this
person is not the logic of the group. for when ordinary individuals
like the Priest, the Politician, the Civil Servant , the Barrister or
the Football Player – when they join a group – any group – they
alienate more or less what is personal to themselves concerning that
group. And they obviously do this in return for whatever benefits,
real or imagined, they anticipate thereafter. This does not mean that
such alienation is to be either trusted or distrusted, but rather that
personal logic will not answer for the group's activities. They are
separate and apart. Moreover, when Pope Adrian IV gave Ireland to
Henry 11 as a gift, its justification in personal terms is ostensibly
false, inadequate and futile. As one commentator described it:
"… around 1155 the (English) Pope Adrian IV authorized King Henry II
to invade Ireland "to proclaim the truths of the Christian religion to
a rude and ignorant people"; on condition that a penny should be
yearly paid from each house to the See of Rome. The Pope based his
right to Ireland thus:
"For it is undeniable, and your majesty acknowledges it, that all
islands on which Christ the sun of righteousness hath shined, and
which have received the Christian faith, belong of right to St. Peter
and the most holy Roman church." (Laudabiliter)
Even though both Pope and Prince, donor and donee, were Englishmen,
and notwithstanding Adrian's ' Anglicana affectione', any logic
personalising the gift fails to see either political power of Popes,
or, what is much the same thing, the dialectics of power between
successive Popes and Princes, or, alternatively, are blinded by their
own religious egoism. Possibly all of these conditions afflicted the
Irish; but the fact remains that the personal logic adopted over the
centuries was calculated to deceive the host nation, such that it
remained in denial of the most obvious fact for centuries on end. It
was – after the Donatio Constantini – the greatest fraud perpetrated
upon the Irish people ever.
So, what logic ought we to use to understand group activity?
While sociologists differ widely on the philosophic underpinnings of
methodology, there is a consensus as to their sociological content.
Lecturers as 'perceiving the reality behind the façade' invariably
refer to this consensus. It is hoped that this Website (particularly
at WebPages 2, 7, 9, 13 and 14 respectively) will furnish an answer to
this question without for the moment addressing it directly or
Suffice it for the moment to say that it is those with a hard
corporate agenda, who more or less enshrine and transmit the bulk of
received values and wisdoms. They also transmit the manner in which
agendas are compiled, who should present them, and how they should be
presented it is also apparent that some more than others, in creating
and enforcing their own values, wish to have them universally
respected and universally imposed. Because of their nature, religions
tend, on this account, to be intolerant and totalitarian. For our part
we can assert that there are no accidents, only contrived human
activity. And on foot of that we can try to differentiate how these
values, customary and deeply ingrained, are transmitted. We can try to
learn who transmits them, and under what circumstances they are
transmitted or, alternatively, under what circumstances they can be
changed or resisted but this is a subject better dealt with in
anthropology rather than history. For our present purposes we mention
these things in order to anticipate the obvious multidisciplinary
concerns of modern criminology.
In this vein, therefore, one should not be afraid to slip one's
moorings if research requires it, and go wherever reason and critical
enquiry leads. One should not shrink from enquiring into related
areas, into the origins of either morals or the genome, into the
difference between Keynesians and Monetarists, or for that matter into
the purpose of philosophy, the limits of psychology or the
unquestioned dogmas of religion. Such curiosity at the outset behoves
the prospect of formulating a philosophy and criminology of one's own.
We do not, therefore, deny the value of a multidisciplinary approach –
such, indeed, is what the author conceives the sociological
imagination in part to be. The remaining sociological part is how one
constitutes the disciplines into a total perspective. The remainder of
this Overview is primarily designed towards outlining such a
So, where to begin?
(O aimsear Freud -- agus roimhe sin fiu, o aimsear Maine de Biran no
Renouvier anall -- ni mor don ainilseoir gur mhaith leis cursios a
dheanamh ar chursai shoisialta, amharc a phearsain fein a nochtadh. Ni
nach ionadh, ni feidir le h-einne saol duine eile a aimsiu i gcupla
bfhocal ar Website ar bith agus nil an t-udar seo ro-thogtha le
nochtadh ar bith maidir lena shaol phriobhaideach. Fairis sin, afach,
glacann (1.a).
Ag a' Baile leis go bfhuill
ciall ag dul leis na cupla focail, mar a dearfa, agus leis na
pictiiuiri a roghnaiodh. Ta fhios ag einne a mhaireann ar feadh breis
agus seasca bliain nach bfhuil W ebsite ar bith oiriunach o thaobh
spais agus speis de a shaol a abairt. Mar sin, ni saol an udair ata
ann, ach rogha beag des na dathannai mora a thug – agus a thugann --
miniu agus milseacht da shaol. Agus ce nach raibh riomh Gaeilge o
dhuchas aige, b'fhearrde dho an stracfheacaint seo ar a churaimi
phriobhaideacha a choimead faoi scath na Gaeilge.)
The story of Irishcriminology is one of singular fascination and one
can only hope that the reader shares the author's enthusiasm for it
from the outset. Failing that , one hopes that the reader may become
infected with its (1.b.) Raison d'Etre. If not, one can only hope that
some aspects of the site holds an appeal for those who have entered
it; although it would be the author's preference if those whose
interest is peaked would review it in full, rather than flick their
way through the webpages.
Even a stranger to Ireland could not but be struck by the incidents of
public scandals. To mention but three of them – there is clerical
paedophilia, the 'troubles' in Northern Ireland, and the incidents of
Tribunals aimed at eliciting the overabundance of sleaze throughout
the Republic. These items alone, when put together, must make the most
recalcitrant feel that a new language is necessary to engage the
bigger picture, which these scandals provoke. Such a language is the
primary business of criminology.
Any real examination of Irish culture will begin, one feels, with some
reflection on its origins and tensions. The (2.)
History/Anthropology Webpage,
therefore, is where we begin our quest. Understandably, before
embarking upon our analyses, some preliminary matters require our
attention, the most important of which is to acquire a 'sense of
So important is a sense of history to any and every social science –
not to mention its civilising properties on the individuals who study
it -- that to proceed without critically fashioning such a sense of
history and some sense of Irish history, is tantamount to buffoonery
of an inexplicable order. The especial problem in Ireland is that the
cultural base is so close to what we find in a European museum that
the proper study of Irish history may well be anthropological in
nature. Moreover, without a theory of history, however
unsophisticated, any attempt at understanding the dispersion of ideal
or predominant forms of the Irish personality is impossible. To assist
himself in this task, the author has prepared three works (2.a., 2b,
and 2.c.) attempting to explain what he means at this very important
(2.a.) Emile Durkheim On Crime And Punishment introduces the enquirer to some
criminological concerns at the anthropological and historical levels
and insinuates at the same time a sociological method which at once
dislocates him from the individual and personal perspectives of the
priest, the psychologist and the lawyer --whose views, however
important they may be with respect to individual cases, far too often
inhibit explanation at the criminological or sociological level, and
tend, generally, to impoverish the kinds of discourse that need to be
developed. In this very vein, and designed to rescue Irish
criminological 'debate' from it's a-historical fixations, the
following work was written.
(2.b.) The Criminological History of Ireland is an effort to define some essential
concepts regarding history and Irish history ,and at the same time to
delineate the main movements in that history that effectuate a
differential in the paradigm of the Irish personality. Such a history
furthermore tries to direct attention away from the superficiality of
the dominant clichés that assume the reducibility of Irish
criminological history to discrete statements concerning this 'ism',
that 'period', 'the legal system ' or 'the traditional view'.
But one must concede that certain epochs, events or, indeed, trials
are more influential than others. Fourteenth century Ireland, for
example, because it laid down the most fundamental rules of the
Christian conquest has had a remarkable effect on all Irish life. At
least this is a proposition worth pursuing. And where better to seek
confirmation for such a thesis than in Kilkenny, where, with some
trepidation, we try to unpack what we have come to regard as the Mona
Lisa of Irish Criminological literature. However comic it is to
imagine for a moment a fourteenth century English Bishop, laden with 'pontificals',
running around Kilkenny, torch and faggot at the ready, trying to
catch a septuagenarian Flemish Matron in order to burn the Bejasus out
of her, it still could not detract from the centrality of this
quintessentially Irish case. By 'Irish' I do not mean that it is
particularly the product of creative native social or cultural
phenomena. On the contrary, it is quintessentially 'Irish' because,
more than any other single event, it radiates the Christian Irish
conquest, its terms and conditions of conquest, together with the
national and international mores that have compromised – indeed,
defined -- Irish culture ever since. From its inception the Christian
conquest resolved to occupy the most ingrained position in the Irish
psyche and has never been questioned, much less challenged.
And even if the fourteenth century case of (2.c.) Alice The
Irish Witch exhibited
significant and original aspects germane to the history of ideas, it
also presents us with a skeletal framework of the body politic of the
Christian conquest, including the regard (or lack of it) in which
Gaelic Ireland was held. This was no simple imposition of the Holy
Roman religion upon an immature Gaelic and Pagan one. Far from it! In
its boldness, its originality, in its total uncompromising arrogance,
it appropriated, manufactured and packaged Irish fertility to the
single and uncompromising service of the Holy Roman Empire. In
audacity and scope, it paralleled the epic proportions of the Tain.
But it went far beyond the conquest of fertility. In its socially
engineered programmes the Roman Church retained Irish fertility in
perpetuity. This coveted fertility and its prolonged protection was --
from the beginning -- embedded with paradigmatic precision in the
Irish psyche. Furthermore, it was fashioned and designed never – until
quite recently – to acquire the wherewithal to outgrow its imperial
programming. The reasons for this were both mesmeric and paralytic;
for part of the programming was to ensure that any attempt to outgrow
or replace the Holy Family (now embedded in the Irish psyche) was sure
to result in a paralysis of effort which, sooner or later, was
converted yet again into a self-fulfilling holy Roman prophecy.
For these extraordinary reasons the author regards both these
analytical works -- 2.b. and 2. c. --(Both unfinished) as of primary
importance to an understanding of the Website as a whole. Webpage 2.a.
attempts to inaugurate a new philosophy of Irish history and 2.b.
purports to identify the forces at work in Ireland's anti-history, its
violent past, its stultified present and its perfectly invisible and
spontaneous future. These forces, which have been present over the
past fifteen hundred years, are still visible on the very barren
ground of the Irish intellectual landscape!
The replacement – and the manner of replacement -- of the extended
family, the tribe, by the 'Holy' Roman Family determined by way of
absolute displacement the ensuing centuries of Irish social and
familial life – directly down to the contemporary preconditions of the
Northern Ireland --'troubles', not to mention the Irish Diaspora of
clerical paedophilia.
It is a strong theme of this site that in every succeeding century the
same seeds of social engineering, though planted by the foreign
government throughout Ireland's middle ages, were maintained by the
aficionados of the Christian conquest and led invariably, logically
and socio-logically to its continuing violence. Once set in motion the
forces of the conquest necessarily implied the prolonged destruction
of the autochthonous race of Gaels, whose entire culture, (philosophy,
religion, extended familial arrangements, together with their laws,
customs, past-times and their entire use of the Gaelic language), was
destroyed forever.
By logical extension of the middle ages, (3.) The Criminology of
the Christian Conquest can be viewed as the Holy Roman
Empire's civil war, or partly so. The bid for power amongst the now
divided Christian conquerors should not alarm us. It is perfectly
comparable with the civil wars amongst the city-states that preceded
the Christian conquest and the nation states that followed it.
To sustain the ground won by the Christian conquest various old
frontiers had to be protected while new ones had to be created.
Throughout the Renaissance and the Reformation, new crimes of Church
and State served to define the advancing dialectic of Church and
Nation State.
(3.a.) The Religious Wars are
a continuation of this condition. In Ireland it is ab initio a foreign
conquest, the dialectic between the conquest parties, Rome and London,
reinforcing in turn, at first the undesirability and immorality of
Gaelic civilisation (by Rome) and then the repression and redundancy
of it (by Rome and London). The protagonists are now marshalled
against each other, -- not as crusaders and infidels, Norman knights
and Irish pagans, but as Roman and English Christians versus Gaelic
pagans and heretics.
Up to the time of the Reformation the Knights, operating out of their
headquarters in Kilmainham, understood their power in Ireland within
(and without) the jurisdiction of the Donation of Constantine, which,
coupled with the Donatio Hiberniae (Laudabiliter), legitimated every
act of plunder, plantation and murder done by the English in Ireland.
This legitimacy, first Papal, was no mere venture after the fashion of
the crusades, but issued forth from the feared and hallowed halls of
Rome and Avignon. Under the shifting hegemony of the Reformation,
however, it was to the mercantilist Prince – rather than the medieval
Pope – that Ireland looked to have this new jurisdiction legitimated
anew. The Holy Romans, who could not withstand the rasping history of
the English, remained totally and comfortably in control in Ireland.
And notwithstanding the fact that the Donation of Constantine was a
forgery and the further fact that the Donation Hiberniae (Laudabiliter)
was denied by every authority over Ireland, the Irish never managed to
focus on their real enemies. Even though the forged document, the
Donation of Constantine, could not legitimate Laudabiliter even if it
hadn't been a forgery, the process went ahead without any regard for
the Irish. In other words, when Adrian IV presented Ireland to Henry
11, the grounding instrument was denied over and over, so that the
intention of ever informing the Irish of the sale of their fatherland
was never contemplated. Instead it was denied repeatedly by those
religious who proclaimed their love of Ireland in equal intensity to
their love of truth -- neither of which was equal to their love of the
In retrospect we can see that the earlier Christians, and their
exaggerated esteem of religion, first capitulated to the sovereignty
of Canterbury and through Lanfranc led the way, after the fashion of a
judas goat, to the promulgation of Laudabiliter and the submission of
the native Irish. The fault, if one can talk of fault in such matters,
lies fairly and squarely on the Holy Romans, the English, arguably
absolved by doing what everyone else at the time needed to do for
either self-protection or selfadvancement. Moreover, when one
considers the later fate of the Incas, the Aztecs and South America in
general, Gaelic Ireland and its decayed culture have much to
contribute to the imperialist religious museum.
With the religious wars – particularly the thirty years war -- comes
the widening incidence of martyrdom. What marks the litany of martyrs
and the RC Church's reverence for martyrs is the exclusively
penological and victimological dimension of their power to evoke
sympathy, even in the heat of war. (3.b.) The
Criminology of Martyrology is
designed to remind us of the irresponsible connection between
unquestioned beliefs and the consequences of their dogmatic demands.
Everyone knows that the best way to defend is to attack. All old
soldiers know it only too well. And so, too, does the oldest soldiers
of all, the well-trained members of the RC church. In a similar vein
they know that the best defence against the charge of being
unbelievably wealthy, is to claim poverty and beg at every corner and
turn of the road. And the best way to ward off charges of torture and
cruelty (whether arising out of the Inquisition, the Witchcraft
trials, or the beating and buggering of children in schools across the
world) is to plead a victimology of your own. The long-term -- as well
as the immediate – effect of claiming to be a victim is to disarm all
enquiries into the charges against one. And Martyrology fits into this
extraordinary category – which is why agitators are seen at once as
martyrs and traitors, the one glorified by the Church and the other
despised by the State. This was a carry-over of the trial of the
Knights Templars. When they were fighting the crusades, both Prince
and Pope, supplied them with the wherewithal necessary to slay the
heathen on all sides. But when they returned to Europe, since they
held or could have held the balance of power between Pope and Prince,
became the logically embroiled enemies of both.
From the perspective of (4.)
Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth Century Ireland what we find is what we must expect to
find – a Presbyterian nationalism contesting its essentially bourgeois
composition against the superior forces of the English. What is most
craved here is the right to exploit what it regards as its own
resources, its own country. The ambivalence with the Catholic masses,
therefore, has now reached an impasse which resonates with what was
present at the original Christian conquest – what does one do with the
superstitious natives? In the teeth of war Wolfe Tone wants to 'raise'
Catholics to the rank of citizenship. At least this was better
than being killed as an 'Hibernicus' under the Normans or hanged as a
Roman Rebel under Cromwell. If nothing else the Irish Catholics
learned (for the first time) the nature of materialist nationalism
from the Presbyterians. They could never have learned this from the
Holy Romans. Why? Because the Holy Romans had once sold them to the
English, and if they either learned about their own history or about
the Church or about nationalism, they would no longer be exploitable
by the Holy Romans. And even to the present day the IRA/Sinn Fein
alliance vacillates between its religious/secular components, as if it
never quite made the grade to the bourgeois plateau of the
Presbyterians from whom they learned their nationalism.
For most of Europe the Renaissance meant a renewal of learning, a
looking back at the past in an attempt to make a history, and to
reexamine the classics of the past. With the Irish there was nowhere
to look. The Gaels had been hated and eradicated by the religious
groupings, and there was very little past the Statutes of Kilkenny
that wasn't written in the tiresome language of Church Latin. The arts
had no base but a foreign one from which to develop, and even to the
present day it is hard to conceive of the Irish with any grasp of
history, much less of philosophy or the philosophy of history. Indeed,
religions have a capacity in Ireland to remain like static
electricity, a pious tautology of the mythologically obvious. (5). Crime and
Punishment in Nineteenth Century Ireland, therefore, is the outcome of a
tiresome wait. It lies somewhere between a litinised Martyrology of
Churchmen on the one hand and the inability of immolated patriots to
compete with them on the other.
The nineteenth century Irishman found that he had inherited the
patriotism of Wolfe Tone and the bourgeois Presbyterians, but this
rhetoric was converted into Catholic ballads – as if 1798 had been a
peasants' revolt! Coupled with the victimology of the Catholic
sacrifice, even after the Catholic sell-out of the Presbyterians, the
new move was for Catholic Emancipation. The same or similar forces
orchestrated both the famine and the scaffold. The betrayal of the
middle ages and, principally the Catholic Church's part in that
continuing betrayal resulted in a long wait for the Messiah, the New
Jerusalem, and the wait was kept alive by successive bloody assizes.
At first there was the Tithe War, the attack mostly against the
usurping Established Protestant Church. Whatever Christian
conquest there had been, the British were to blame for it. At least
that was the story coming from the Catholic Church, and they knew only
too well how to tell a story. They had already blamed the Jews for the
crucifixion of Jesu – never the Roman Empire!
Then there was the struggle for Catholic (not Irish or Gaelic)
Emancipation (the Church organising itself and its nation under Daniel
O Connell, a 'Liberator'). Then there was the 1848 Rising, a further
Rising by the Fenians in 1867, the Land League, when the Church lets
the would-be nation (and Parnellites) know who's who at the Irish
powerstakes. There is hardly an event in the nineteenth century
(or, for that matter, the twentieth century) that is not directly
traceable to the same kind of foreign Government as obtained in Alice
Kyteler's time.
On a lighter but relevant note the (5.a.) The Riddle of the
Caswell Mutiny, tells the tale of a mutiny
that occurred in the mid1870s. It describes the mutiny and the reasons
for it, the succeeding countermutiny, and how the survivors to the
Caswell back to cork, where the Greek mutineer, Bombos, was tried and
hanged. The testimony against the Bombos was convincing, and he was
hanged with a Fenian type terrorist Thomas Crowe, who was over sixty
when he was hanged. These trials are dealt with at length, as are
their executions and the opinions of the day respecting them. Three
years later another mutineer, who had escaped, is captured, tried in
Cork, with the same outcome. The story lends some colour to the
century and provides a connection with Agrarian crime as well as
distinct pictures of the awful ceremony attending upon the sacrifice
of hanging. (For other nineteenth century crimes See: (19.) Addenda)
A similar type of nineteenth century justice is present in (5.b.)
The Maam Trasna Murders. This murder case was probably the
most exasperating murder case in the nineteenth century criminal
calendar. As one might imagine what makes it stand out is, inter alia,
the fact that it appears at first as a 'crime ordinary' murder, one
without further ramifications political or religious. When analysed,
however, it turns out to be utterly shot through with political and
religious concerns, with an infectious doggedness for covering any
defined statement that approximates truth, but which -- the more one
progresses – overwhelms the dramatis personae and forces them into a
swamp that has for a floor a bottomless and shifting pit of unreliable
and makeshift verbiage.
How does one describe a society in which no one is credible?
No one was brought to justice for the worst family slaughter since
Macbeth, and while nothing could be proved one feels overwhelmingly
that everyone knew who did the killing and why, but they preferred to
talk about it, and talk about it, and talk about it…. Yet another
proof that a religious community is not a society! And certainly does
not possess the higher morality of an integrated secular society.
Twentieth century Ireland visibly carries the hieroglyphics of the
twelfth and the sixteenth centuries. The Christian conquistadores,
Catholics and Protestants, continue their initial onslaught, but this
is no longer against the Gaelic speaking pagans but against
themselves. The pagan Gaels are well and truly dead to the pretensions
of Papal imperialism as well as Protestant Legalism. Even the dulcet
tones of Thomas Davis cannot reach them. In place of Gaelic
annihilation, what we have is its ghost. Phoenixlike – or so it is
believed – Gaelic Ireland comes alive in the Gaelic League, Conradh Na
Gaeilge, the make-belief movement that gives some credence to the
Catholic Nationalists' prejudiced notion, that ancient Ireland was
something that the British -- rather than the Popes and their Norman,
Anglici and Irish clerics – destroyed. Up to the 1922, learning Irish
functioned on the level of a continuing fallacy – a fallacy that
promoted resistance to imperialist Britain and disguised with impunity
the entrenchment of imperialist Rome. Since the Reformation the
reformed and un-reformed church, mostly in the form of Irish
Protestantism and Catholicism confronted each other time and time
again, and in 1922, for the first time since the twelfth century, the
natives (now 'Irish' rather than Gaels or Anglici) win the day for
Roman Catholicism.
reflects the dialectic of the parties to the Christian Conquest shoots
through (6.)
Crime and Punishment in Twentieth Century Ireland in ways that are not immediately
apparent. Indeed, the composition of Irish 'criminologists' is
designed never to examine either Irish society or Irish history – but
is primed to talk about 'crime' in the abstract.
This topic also reflects the postures, which the Christian conquerors
assume in the face of the development of possessive individualism and
the development of 'materialism' generally. In its misunderstanding of
'materialism' the Catholic church betrays a naiveté, particularly
concerning its own attachment to wealth and power, that is quite
untenable in any developed society. Throughout World War11 (and a
decade thereafter) Whitaker/Lemass took to reading Keynes' General
Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936). Languidly thereafter
the new Republic, driven by its critical loss of manpower through
emigration, was glad to follow the Protestant/materialist example and
acclaim the virtues of producing wealth. Otherwise, Protestants and
Catholics alike would have left Ireland – and left it to its most
unproductive and obscurantist elements, namely, the Catholic Church
and its uneducatable Taliban. Protestants, on the other hand, were
reluctant to boast about materialist successes, such that in an
unguarded moment, one might be excused for thinking that Max Weber's
Die Protestantische Ethik und der 'Geist' des Kapitalismus (translated
in 1930 into Protestantism and the Rise of Capitalism) was brought
about after all by pure accident. Though not a detailed study of
Protestantism – but rather an entrée to Weber's later works on
religions and economics. One might be forgiven for suspecting that the
connection between religion and economics was learned as much from
Puritans (through Weber) as much as from Protestants (through Keynes).
The problem was to deliver the pill of materialism orally to the Irish
Catholics (through Lemass/Whitkaer), and this was a Joycean
achievement of language as much as a kaleidoscopic skill in focus and
The century is divided into three periods, each allocated a volume of
text. The great Catholic triumph of 1922 – and its more matured
celebration at the Eucharistic Congress a decade later, is nowhere
diminished first by the Protestant exodus, and, then, -- incipiently
at first and thereafter in a flood in the fifties -- the exodus of
Catholics. It is only with mass emmigration of both Protestants and
Catholic that the true anti-materialist nature of Catholicism becomes
evident. Ireland was haunted by Weber's thesis on puritanical
capitalism, or more significantly the connection between belief and
production, belief and the division of labour. In Ireland's case the
inability to produce wealth in the frozen climate of religious
idealism remained evident throughout the century.
In (6.) Crime
And Punishment In Twentieth Century Ireland: Volume 1: To Those Who
Wait, 1900-1950, the periods
1900-1922 and 1922 --1950 are contrasted. The logical conclusion of
the first Christian conquerors is by now apparent. Gaelic lands,
appropriated for Christian use and benefit, and several times severed
and enclosed on the one hand by the apportioning of Religious Dioceses
and Parishes and on the other by the demarcation of secular Baronies
and Counties – all these past appropriations and severances are to be
finally severed yet again. This time the severance, at the hands of an
exhausted secular and humane power, points up for the first time in
Irish history the two original and enduring protagonists who ruled it
since the time of Patrick and Kyteler. In Ireland the first
–are-last and the last-are-first only because the victory has been
total, and the spoils are between friends.
What was present in the fourth, the twelfth and the sixteenth
centuries, is still present, active and vindictive in Twentieth
century Ireland. In 1922 the division of Ireland into the most logical
apportionments that identify the interests of the original Christian
conquerors takes place. The Mediterranean myth, for centuries implicit
in Ireland's history-less past, becomes explicit. Northern Ireland
(now representing British/Irish and transplanted Protestantism rather
than Romano-Anglici-Normans) and the Free State (representing Roman
autochthonous Catholicism rather than Patrician and Papal Norman
clerics) are cleft asunder. But even this apartheid cannot prevail;
for at the end of the century the old antagonisms reassert themselves
in Northern Ireland in a vigour, which the Southern Catholics were
(7.) Crime and Punishment in Twentieth Century Ireland, Volume 2: A
Description of The Criminal Justice System (CJS), 1950-1980 tries to correct the manner in
which, on the one hand, the most authoritative persons benefiting from
The Crime Industry, have written at length on the Criminal Justice
System without, it would appear, explaining in any realistic terms
what in effect they are talking about. One can do this in Ireland!
The second matter, which needs to be put aright, is the unfortunate
mess they have made of the criminal statistics. Again one feels that
the persons addressing these matters are so removed from the Irish
Criminal Justice System and the manner in which it works that one
wonders about their credibility. Indeed, a good livelihood can be made
out of looking at the criminal statistics in the most superficial
manner imaginable, declaring, on the one hand, that they are not good
enough for them to use for some purpose or other, and then, on the
other hand, referring them to someone else to say what ought to be
done to correct their incurable deficiencies. Passing the proverbial
buck is rampant in Ireland. Either that or they criticise the
statistics for not having precisely what they do have, that is, a full
account of how each crime (and indictable crimes generally) in the
calendar is carried through the courts, giving their broad outcomes,
the estimated sentences, and their aggregate recidivism rates.
The Gaelic entries (As Gaeilge) first focused on the more modern
difficulties with Garda Statistics as well as the real use to which
they could be put. But the difficulties then specified were not the
same difficulties that Dr. David Rottman -- and those who echoed his
criticisms -- referred to. It is now perfectly clear that most of the
references made in respect of Irish Crime Statistics are a little off
the proverbial wall. Most of the things that are customarily declared
about the Garda Commissioner's Annual Report on Crime are absolutely
(7.) Crime and Punishment in Twentieth Century Ireland, Volume 2: A
Description Of The Criminal Justice System (CJS), 1950-1980 is a full and elaborately detailed
clarification of these statistics, their strengths as well as their
weaknesses, and is an attempt to set the record straight. The
assertions made by most commentators are more or less imitative of
findings that were never challenged. This work challenges these
comments; for the repetition of one untruth cannot be allowed to
stand, especially when others repeat it unreflectively. And what more
than anything else confirms this regrettable state of affairs is the
hard realisation that people who speak of the criminal statistics
leave nothing in their works which would lead anyone to believe that
they are in the slightest familiar with their chosen topic. By
achieving the solid installation of such misleading notions in 'Irish
academic circles', the whole aspect of promoting people, might I say '
Opus-Dei-like' is not only subversive of the social sciences in
Ireland, but is of itself an item only equal in significance to the
inability of 'criminologists' to comprehend the Garda Siochana
statistics on crime in the first place. No doubt the 'subversive' one
is related by way of a pious notion of the sciences to the other.
Apart from simply ploughing through the Commissioner's Annual Report
to demonstrate their intrinsic value, two further steps need to be
taken before any sensible policy statements can be made with respect
to the CJS as a whole or to its assembled parts, the Police, the
Courts, the Probation Services, the Prisons, etc. These two things
consist of 1. Knowing quantitatively and qualitatively how the CJS is
constructed annually (Model '75) and how the essential variables
of that construction have varied, if at all, over time (Figure 2.1).
Model '75 is a complete
step-by-step analysis of the statistics provided by the relevant Garda
Commissioner's Annual Report on Crime, the Statistical Abstracts and
the Prison Reports. It is also a demonstration of what the real
quantified Criminal Justice System looks like. The object, of course,
is not simply to make a picture of the nation's inner soul, but to
proportionate the contribution of the respective agencies, which
comprise the system. There is no point, after all, in calling
something The Criminal Justice System unless we are prepared to depict
it as a system. By conceiving of the proportions involved in the
system we are half way to creating policy in respect of scarce
resources and their allocation, not to mention our new capacity to
focus and criticise the pretensions and efficacy of the system as it
performs from year to year. But greater than all these advantages is
the advantage that flows from discovering a recidivist rate which,
when added to model'76, gives us the key to assessing the efficiency
of the CJS as a whole – for all recidivists are, by definition, a
system's failure. But more of this anon.
Figure 2.1 is a simple way of
examining the performance of some of the C1S's most essential
variables since 1950. And with both the comprehensiveness of model '75
and the time-analysis of Figure 2.1, we are given a much greater
understanding of the CJS than ever before. For the moment, all that
remains is that we describe the system's component parts.
The trouble is that the Irish Parliament is such an anaemic child, and
as the RC church knows only too well, easily led and easily
influenced. Parliament makes enormous monies available to the Police,
the Courts, the Probation Services, the Prisons, and enough 'Experts'
to satisfy the most secret ambitions of both the Church and the
Church's State. Parliament does this on two assumptions. One is that
enough money paid to enough police will capture enough criminals to
keep enough courts and lawyers busy in sentencing enough criminals to
enough prisons and places of detention so as to keep enough Priests,
Nuns and Probation Officers (and enough 'Experts') in enough work for
a year – all of whom, operating in solo, will generate enough
complaints to secure enough or more money to get the whole thing going
all over again and secure matters for another year. The second
assumption is that this is an intelligent thing to do!
The Police
Despite their many powers, the Irish police have the difficult raison
d'Etre of protecting us from ourselves. That they are invariably shat
upon by 'Experts' in – and employed by – the Department of Justice,
Equality and Law Reform is a sine qua non of the new embryonic class
formation. This sustained attitude is not just a political
restructuring of defined police roles, but also of the stereotypical
allocated to 'clever' lawyers, 'ambitious' Civil Servants, 'knowing'
priests and 'inscrutable' psychologists. It also betrays the
Department's felt need to manage and predict the use of police powers
and outcomes in the interests of a more conservative and possessive --
almost Opus Dei-like – orientation. This orientation, already achieved
with respect to the Technological Colleges, the Civil Service and the
Irish Bench-and-Bar, suggests a pregovernmental agenda by higher
powers, in accordance with which the police are being re-organised.
Why it is futile to look to an opposition at this level in Ireland is
precisely due to the expertise of Opus Dei cadres, who have penetrated
the Labour Party quite deeply, but which, in truth, even under the
naïve banner of James Connolly, was always Catholic in its Irishness
and sacerdotal in its socialism.
Apart from these political speculations, police (Garda Siochana)
powers are quite extraordinary. Yet the traditional view is that the
policeman is merely another citizen in uniform. This lecture, in the
main, attempts to describe the organised structure and orientation of
the Garda Siochana. In so doing, it recognises three levels of police
reality. One concerns the garda as an individual person. This is the
traditional view and interest in his powers tends invariably to
dominate any delineation of the status in society. But there is also
the Garda Siochana, as a structured, powerful organisation. In both
these cases we shall argue that the garda, whether individually or
collectively, defies the simple "citizen-equation". Then there is the
locus of the police within the CJS, where its influence is primary,
not just – as we have already seen – to provide the basic figures for
wrongdoing in our society – and upon which all our discourse depends –
but also to influence each part and totality of the whole system of
criminal justice. While these three aspects or perspectives on the
gardai cannot be addressed at once, this lecture attempts to focus
attention on the primacy of the latter aspect, while supporting the
notion that each member of the force enjoys and exercises privileged
legal rights, whether compared with either the Irish citizen or the
British constable.
The Courts
The whole of the CJS appears to be greater than the sum of its parts.
It is inconceivable that the high guilty rate achieved and sustained
is the outcome of accident. On the face of it, it implies that the
personnel involved in the CJS have entered into defined relationships
to produce the high conviction rate. What constitute in aggregate the
autonomous interests, who secure this annual guilty rate, are the
respectively structured decisions of the actors involved. Put another
way, the constantly high rate of proof obtained in the lower courts
gives credence to the notion that there is an active and autonomous
organisation of normative values shared by the actors comprising the
CJS and which are annually reproduced and reflected in the guilty
To break the criminal cycle, it is clearly necessary to enlighten us
about the disposition of the weaker members of our society. The'
recidivist rate' is sufficient demonstration of the need for help and
advice of a type that is not simply legal on the part of those
offenders who are continually given custodial sentences. Such a
service is the Probation and Welfare Service.
The trick in the Probation Service is two fold. One trick is to put it
about that there is no such thing in Irish criminology as a
'recidivist rate' (See Report of the Expert Group on Crime Statistics)
and the secondly is that only devout Catholics can be professional
enough to do Probation work in Ireland. (See Irish Independent,
Monday, Sept. 20, 2004)
Catholic Probation, like Catholic Criminology, is nonsense. When will
the Bishops realize that they know nothing about family life or its
sociology? They know nothing about women, as lovers or wives or as
people. They know nothing about children, as offspring or as needful
individuals in their formative years, in their teens, or in a
make-belief society. In effect they know little or nothing about the
psychological, sexual or financial needs of families. So would they
please get out of pretending that they are professionally capable of
either re-educating youth or of protecting them from their marauding
and unhealthy members? They would not know a professional social
worker any more than they know the needs of a secular society. They
gave up any inkling of being secular and familiar long ago, when they
opted for eternal glory, and the comfort of temporary communal living!
How do the Irish people rescue their country from marauding Holy
Romans? How in effect do they protect their children from people who
make such outrageous and unsustainable claims? More immediately, how
can a knee-jerking anaemic make-belief State recognize professional
social workers when they meet them?
There are many ways of looking at the CJS, but all of them lead – or
in any event, should lead – to an overview of the system as a whole.
To assist this overview it is convenient to look at a representation
of two aspects of the system: one, which demonstrates the rise or fall
of major crimes over a period, say, between the years 1950-80. The
second things we need to know is how, with respect to persons, these
offences/offenders were treated in the courts. We need to see what
sentences they attracted in respect of each category of crime. We then
need to know how many particularly are given a custodial sentence and
whether they have had previous sentences of a similar type.
Now all these matters, no matter what misleading statements the
so-called 'Experts' have been repeating, are – or were – perfectly
available up to the time when the Department of Justice, etc. decided
to give the police a computer called the PULSE; for thereafter, and
thanks to said 'Experts' no such valuable data has been available.
Why is the recidivist rate so important?
A recidivist rate informs us of the number of convicted persons who
return to prison or who are re-convicted or return to have some
involvement in the CJS (Criminal Justice System). The better rate for
our purposes is, of course, the conservative one, the one that
concentrates on the number of times a person is sentenced to some term
of imprisonment or custody.
It is this rate that also informs us of the failure of the CJS and all
its agencies. At one level it is the acid test that we can hold
against the mountains of purple prose we hear from those who promote
prisons as well as prison reform.
From research already done in this area we are perfectly satisfied
that the whole Aufbau of the CJS is based on the tiniest number of
recidivists who seem to be incurable or, alternatively, all the
prisons and their reformers do not work one jot of difference to
anything except their own egos.
The recidivist rate is important, furthermore, because it completes
the CJS pictorially, quantitatively and significantly. With it we can
see the system as a circular flow in which recidivists are managed by
an excessive number of officials, including religious experts,
criminologists, journalists, 'experts' on police, 'experts' on
prisons, 'experts' on the courts, the law, as well as an army of
child-care workers. The recidivist rate is the acid test of the whole
system's failure and of the uselessness of inexpert advice, including
that of the Department of Justice. Whatever the Department of Justice
thinks about the CJS, it is a matter of utter indifference to the
recidivist-rate. But this is not why we
don't have a recidivist-rate. Why the Irish don't have a
recidivist-rate is because the Department of Justice and their
advisers do not understand the CJS and are, therefore, incapable of
counting crime in any meaningful way.
8. Crime and Punishment in Twentieth Century Ireland Volume 3: The
Crime Industry, 1980-2005
We repeat:
Without an overview of the CJS as outlined above, there can be no real
policies formulated with respect to the CJS itself, or the separate
institutions of Parliament, the Police, the Courts, the Prisons, and
the Probation Service. The above proposition is self-evident.
At the present time, however, the greatest amount of money ever spent
on the CJS since the foundation of the State is spent annually.
Perhaps, this is, as it ought to be. At the same time, however, there
are two interconnecting and unmistakable features, which, when put
together, make for a disconcerting picture of Irish justice.
The one is the very high recidivist rate exhibited in (7.)
Crime and Punishment in Twentieth Century Ireland, Volume 2: A
Description Of The Criminal Justice System (CJS), 1950-1980 and the ensuing imbalance between
the small numbers of persons re-entering the system and the
ever-increasing legion of officials employed to service this
imbalance. One need hardly mention the proliferation of interests now
assembled around the 'criminological enterprise', extending from a
National Crime Council to an Institute of Criminology in UCD and a
myriad of lesser intermediary bodies concerned with drugs, juveniles,
domestic violence, suicides, etc.
Secondly, there has never been less reliable information by way of
either criminal statistics or by way of a critical appraisal regarding
any and all of these institutions that comprise the CJS. It is so dire
that one would feel too embarrassed to ask either the National Crime
Council or any expert from either the Department of Justice or the
Institute of Criminology in UCD to calculate a conviction rate for
rape, a recidivist rate for juvenile theft, or, indeed, a conviction
or proof rate for the lower or the higher courts in the Republic of
Ireland for any year whatsoever since the foudation of the State. Even
more embarrassing is the thought of asking the Department of Justice
to provide a legible intelligent account of crime in the Republic of
Ireland. Maybe that is why no one asks!
9.Sociology And Irish Law:
Having dealt so comprehensively with the CJS, it might be time – for a
while at least – to break out of the narrowness of the criminological
enterprise. We can return later to the punishment side of the equation
(particularly in WebPages 10 to 14 inclusive) and what it has meant to
Ireland historically. For the moment, however, -- and for our very
limited purposes – we wish to introduce the notions of Sociology in
the context of Irish Law.
We feel that this is best done by quantitatively configuring some of
the structural preconditions of crime in the Irish capital. Here we
use ordinary, common and hitherto unused data to exhibit these
preconditions, the obvious implication being that if criminologists or
others who participate in 'crime talk' in the twenty first century,
actually want to make a difference to crime, they must, as an assumed
preliminary matter, be conscious of, and speak to, its structural
To elaborate on this theme three further topics by way of examjple are
introduced. The first deals briefly with what C. Wright Mills has
called the (9.a.)
The Sociological Imagination.
Here we describe what we mean by a sociological approach as opposed to
other approaches. We follow this up with two examples of what we mean.
In (9.b.) An
Opening Lecture in Criminology,
an attempt is made to use, refine and structure in a disciplinary way,
the strong feelings and attitudes, which students invariably have
towards crime. Similarly, (9.c.) A Radical Lecture
On Bunreacht Na h-Eireann is
meant to historicise and radicalise the manner in which we look at
Bunreacht Na h-Eireann. Of itself the Constitution is a contemporary
issue for Irish criminology, creating more problems than it
purports to resolve. For far too long the Constitution has been
the sole property of the lawyers and their masters the politicians of
the Church's State, whose interests in examining it and its varied
sections are always hidden behind the personae of judgement and the
discrete issues canvassed. Seldom, if at all, is it seen as the
possession of either the Church's State authority -- 'the
authorities'-- or the possession of 'the people'. Here we try briefly
to review some of the main and abiding values – all Christian -- upon
which the constitution was built.
== == == == ==
This much done, it is opportune for us to turn to the other side of
criminology, namely, penology or the business of punishment. So slow,
convoluted and, at times, downright difficult is the business of
punishment that we have to allocate sufficient time and space to
understanding both the history of capital punishment as well as the
history of prisons.
In many ways both of these topics are related, not just penologically,
that is, in the manner in which they were related, the one to the
other, throughout penal history, but also in the manner in which we
now approach the business of punishment generally as well as how we
look at prisons as places of detention in particular. Towards
unfolding this task we look at both the history of (10.) Capital
Punishment as well as the. (11.) The
History of Irish Prisons.
It can well be argued that both the general histories of Capital
Punishment and the history of Prisons have already been spelled out
repetitively in the various British, European, American and Australian
penological publications, and one cannot deny such a proposition. At
the same time, it must be remembered that this website is devoted to
the study of Irish society through the study of Irishcriminology, and
in that regard, one can equally argue that we are on virgin territory.
We have already argued that the last thing the Irish care for is their
own history. Secondly, even if they did have a regard for such things,
there is no history or theory of either Capital Punishment in Ireland
or Irish Prisons. And thirdly, if there were such histories or
theories, there is no suggestion that they would be treated in the
same manner as is proposed on this website.
On the subject of (10.)
Capital Punishment, therefore, it is proposed to exhibit our
approach to it under the following Volumes or subjects:
Vol. 1: Last of the Betagii
Vol. 2: A Short History of Male Executions in Ireland
Vol. 3: A Short History of Female Executions in Ireland
Vol. 4.: Nineteenth-Century Female Executions – A Monograph
Vol. 5: A Short History of Irish Infanticide
Vol. 6: The Penology of Samuel Haughton
Volumes 2 to 4 inclusive deal with the broad history of judicial
executions in Ireland. This work started out as an article on the
execution of the second last female hanged in Ireland in 1903. From
that it grew into a review of female executions in the twentieth
century, then the nineteenth century. It soon became apparent, after
the fashion of Aeschylus' Oresteia, that the workings and gearings of
male and female executions were also affected by the murder of
infants. And in this way it became also apparent that three separate
Volumes would be needed to unfold the full story. Because of the
numbers of female executions in the nineteenth century, it was also
decided to collect and review each one available one – and this, in
turn went into a separate volume (But more of that anon). For the
moment the three volumes in question begin with (10. Vol. 2), A Short
History of Male Executions in Ireland, which deals with the male or aggressive
gene and the manner in which male criminals were executed in Ireland. (10.Vol. 3), A
Short History of Female Executions in Ireland is reserved for females. Realising the
place of modern infanticide and its influence on capital punishment, a
short potted third volume was prepared. Further, by way of index to
Vol. 3 a monograph accounting for all nineteenth-century female
executions is to be had from this website (10.Vol.
4), Nineteenth-Century Female Executions – A Monograph)
(10.Vol. 5) A Short History of Irish Infanticide deals briefly with the history of
infanticide in Ireland. All these monographs are made with the aim of
making the more recent history of the subject amenable to Irish
scholars and to help criminologists focus on past punitive
alternatives as an instrument of future assessments.
(Vol. 1) Last of the Betagii and (Vol. 6)
The Penology of Samuel Haughton are special. The forgotten
execution of the Catholic housewife, Mary Daly, and her young
Protestant lover, Joseph Taylor, in 1903, was not such a simple event
in the criminal calendar of 'Queen's County', and (10.Vol. 1) Last of
the Betagii demonstrates it.
Coincidentally, Dr Samuel Haughton was born within a few miles of
where Mary Daly grew up. Of Killeshin and Quaker origins, Haughton's
family straddled the Carlow/Laois border. He lived in Burrin Street,
Carlow, where his house can still be seen. It stands in a line between
Carlow Castle and what was the old (and the new) prison. But
Haughton's story is different. And it belongs where we find it – right
in the midst of the nineteenth century struggle for a higher form of
civilization. A contemporary and adversary of Darwin, Haughton was one
of the great Victorians. (10.Vol. 6) The Penology of Samuel Haughton is a short (unfinished) study describing
the great scientist's preoccupation with capital punishment. Haughton
might well have been regarded as 'Father of the Drop', had his
endeavours not taken a tragic/comic turn.
Which brings us indirectly to examine (11.) The History of
Irish Prisons As with the
Irish attitude to Capital Punishment, so, too, the Irish attitude to
prisons. Needless to say, the RC church's view was the Irish view, and
it reluctantly followed the Protestant line as to the propriety of
punishment. But since Catholics were the persons who were
predominantly hanged, the RC church had some fancy footwork to do. In
order to hold the sympathies of its flock as occasion might
understandably demand, it was suitably inchoate, confused or silent.
Nineteenth century British, Protestant and Parliamentary legalisms
conjured up harsh rulers and usurping governments. Under such a guise
criminal as well as military executions were doled out to 'innocent
victims' by rapacious an irreverent non-Catholics. Now that Catholics
in Ireland were the masters of their own fate, an uneasy transition of
poacher turned gamekeeper was to hang with religious tenacity over
that area of social life bridging religious morals and criminal law
(otherwise called Irish criminology). The Irish Catholics, in effect,
were looking for someone to tell them what attitudes they ought to
adopt -- attitudes that were consistent with their retention of power
over the interface. This is one reason why things pertaining to the
Department of Justice, Education and Foreign Affairs, as well as
things otherwise pretending to be criminological, are always
scrutinised and filtered by the RC church. It is also why those close
to Opus Dei and related Legionnaires do most books published in this
Once grasped and firmed up under the Free State, the RC church could
never let go of any area over which its social, educational and
familial suzerainty extended. Its medieval values, however, were
constantly confronted with the modern social realities. At the same
time they could not and would not let the social sciences grow where
religious know-how dominated. Religious repression, therefore, at best
gave rise to utter incompetence and at worst to the blanket
appointment of mediocre minds intent on denying any validity to the
social sciences.
And rather than admit its own medieval inadequacies it stubbornly
hangs on to areas it knows nothing of, preferring the foreign and
mediocre mind, to which it has traditionally and exploititatively been
attached, to fill the gaps it is reluctant to be seen to rule. In its
confusion the androgynous Church/State of the Irish doesn't just fear
and control its interface with criminology, it fears and controls the
social sciences and delimits the very notion of freedom amongst the
Will the Irish ever be permitted by the Church and its Puppet State to
develop the social and secular sciences in their own right? So
pervasive of the body politic is the religious ethos that examples of
it are everywhere (for those who want to see, and) are strewn about
this website in a profusion that would become redundant and largely
irrelevant if this website was concerned with the state of criminology
in any other European country.
Not too dissimilar to the Prisons (12.) A New History Of
Police In Ireland attempts to
re-write the history of the Irish Police in the light of the author's
modified views of history. In 1974 the author wrote The History of the Irish
Police (From Earliest Times To The Present Day) He now wishes to re-address this work
and bring it into line with his current thinking.
This work brings us to an end of the more history-orientated subjects,
allowing us the opportunity to examine some (13.) Contemporary
Issues. Because of the more
recent widespread scandals in Ireland, perhaps the most obvious of
these issues concerns the very institutions themselves. These include
the RC church (for its scandals regarding paedophilia, Episcopal
cover-ups, and Church/State deals to buy off the victims and their
lawyers). Further scandals involving Departments of State, Planning
Authorities, Local Government graft, Judicial interference in due
process; Party Political funds, systematised theft by the Banking
confraternity, miss-appropriation of funds by State Bodies, and the
ever corrosive subversions of secret societies, like the IRA, and Opus
Dei. Less secret but inaccessible societies like CORI (the Conference
of Religious of Ireland) in education, while not the subject matter of
those interminable Tribunals of Inquiry in Ireland, are nowhere
amenable to scrutiny.
Such matters are so widespread in the Republic of Ireland that any
hope of covering their content is impossible. Our purposes may be
served better, however, if in (13.) Contemporary
Issues we confine our
scrutiny to examining the four most criminologically relevant
concerns. These contemporary issues come under the following headings:
a. Catholic Criminology
b. Crime and Irish Politics
c. Crime and the Press in Ireland
d. Crime and Criminology in Ireland
The topic (13.a.) Catholic Criminology as a contemporary issue, amounts to an examination of how the RC
church organises a total community without as little as a flicker of
rebellion. By definition, of course, it excludes Northern Ireland, as
it has excluded the Southern Protestant and a small number of
dissident others. As a set of religious values, which dominates every
shade and aspect of Irish life, it needs to be critically examined
both as a whole and as the only epistemological source and practical
controller of Irish social life. Most native sons in modern times who
have taken on this task -- James Joyce, Noel Browne and, indirectly,
Dermot Morgan ('Father Ted'), have realised a vindictive and
tyrannical foe, even before the militancy of Opus Dei and the
Legionnaires. Only Noel Browne lived on to tell the tale. Needless to
say, limiting their critics to such an insignificant number is a feat
of catholic engineering that approximates the fabulous. But the fable
should be understood in Toto, that is, as a unity of social
arrangements in which the church has tied the political party system,
the Irish media, and the legal and constitutional establishment to her
exclusive universal ambitions. In (13.b.) Crime and
Irish Politics, therefore,
policies on crime – when there are any – are invariably meant to
out-preach the Parish Priest. Occasionally the concurrence of
vocabularies is thought to be accidental, where in actual fact they
are the reverse. The Irish party system is configured as an
approximation of Irish Catholicism, since when all Irish parties
sooner rather than later become the idle instruments of the Catholic
In hot pursuit of religion and party politics is an amazing and
obliging media. To comprehend the media's treatment of crime and
criminals, it must, like the political parties, be seen in the overall
context of the Church/State requirements. Thereafter, its patterning
in the manner in which it treated clerical paedophilia, Limerick
gangs, white collar criminals, as well as the manner in which 'crime
talk' is organised, apportioned, unravelled and persistently used to
fan the Department of Justice becomes transparent. ((13.c.) Crime and
the Press in Ireland) is only
a small part of the machinery of Church/State government, which is
what this topic tries to demonstrate.
In the land of superstition and freedom a man is perfectly free to
believe that Professors of Law fall into the Republic's third level
institutions willy nilly. Some may even believe it an accident that
the two last Professors of Criminology in TCD, the 'two Marys', became
Presidents of their beloved country. Others may believe that this
phenomenon was an 'Act of God'. And having read the 'Da Vinci Code'
the second opinion by far outweighs the first. Obviously, where
Church-and-State –goeshand- in-glove, there is great tension as to
which is hand and which is glove. The moral interface, therefore,
between religious dogmatism and the secular insights of the social
sciences (including criminology – for it is in matters concerned with
crime and punishment that immediate moral attitudes are revealed and
defined) is one, which must arouse the strongest of passions.
Unfortunately, the fight is perfectly one-sided. There is the RC
church, the Goliath on the one part, and in effect, since the 'two
Marys' went off politicking, there is no one but tourists to withstand
the might of Rome. Nevertheless, (13.d.) Crime and
Criminology in Ireland is
very much part of the church's engineering patchwork otherwise covered
by the press and the political parties.
That Irish social life is but a mere reflection of the RC church's
requirements can be shown in the make-up of the family, of the GAA
(the Gaelic Athletic Association), of the ICA (the Irish Country
Women's Association), of the Garda Siochana, of the Civil Service, of
the Army (even before Opus Dei), of the Banks and Credit Unions, of
the Bench and the Bar of Ireland, and of the Boy Scouts and Girl
Guides of Ireland, etc., etc. Any thinker critical of Irish
epistemology is automatically the enemy of the RC church; for the
first thing such a critique would expose is the very tenuous and
spurious basis upon which the Roman church controls the people of
Ireland, their values and institutions, and in so doing how it serves
its own international agenda at everyone else's expense.
It is this which brings us to the main reason for this website, the
creation of a groundwork for the development of a critical Irish
Criminology. The values should guide anyone working the grain (14.) Towards An
Irish Criminology will take
their inspiration from the historical analysis of its experiences to
date. Whichever group tries to seize the central governance of that
experience should be resisted, just as this website has resisted the
widespread and persistent powers of the RC church in the Republic of
The first and foremost subject claiming the attention of
Irishcriminology is the Northern Irish 'troubles'. The only group in
the whole island that can resist the all-powerful ambitions of the
Roman Empire (14.a.) Vol. 1: Northern Ireland) is the Northern Protestant. In this
alone he is invaluable to the immediate future of Ireland. How
invaluable can be seen by comparing him with his southern counterpart.
With respect, the Southern Protestant, now shorn of great numbers, is
a bit of a wet, and even if the Northern Protestant can be used to
give new voices a chance to breathe, that is not the endplay. In the
end there is no doubt but that the ex-Catholic is the only one who
shall change the evil monolith of Rome; for only he can understand
what is at stake, and only he shall have the fire for the fight. All
others are apt to become as mere spectators s; for like all creatures
they, too, have forgotten whence they came, and even if they
remembered it, it would not be the same place whence the new ex-Irish-
Catholic comes. In such a situation it can only be expected that the C
of I, and other religions with a like incline, will actually join
forces with the RC church and become themselves the enemy of liberty.
Northern Ireland is in many ways is the alpha and the omega of Irish
history and the resultant hatreds between Roman Catholicism and 'the
others' is precisely a disguised Imperialist coup and is not divorced
from the whole previous history of Ireland. It is – and must be
presently conceived of as – Irish history; for here before our eyes we
see the prevailing persuasions of the RC church and the original
machinations of the Christian conquest.
Lest there are any lingering doubts about the state of Irish society
in the twenty first century (14 .b.) Vol. 2: The
Chalk Republic is a critical
examination and rejection of the Roman Catholic's creation in the
South of Ireland. From an analysis of the tensions and conflicts in
Northern Ireland, coupled with a revelation of the RC church's
ownership of the Republic of Ireland, it follows that it rather than
any other body needs to be challenged, opposed and has its hegemony
broken in Ireland.
But how can this be done? How can a few persons resist the greatest,
the richest, the most powerful Empire the world has ever known? The
Holy Roman Empire outlived the 'Real' Roman Empire. It saw off the
British Empire, and its use of Ireland as an operative base for its
international agenda, is proof of its corporate resistance. Indeed,
its alliance with America is meant to oust Israel, with whom it shares
a desire for another crusade, and now that Opus Dei, the Irish, the
Australian and the Spanish governments have got the Jesuits into East
Timor – a preliminary for Bush/Blair putsch, that crusade under the
guise of a terrorist war is on. So, how does David (excuse the name)
tackle Goliath, especially one with such fantastic powers? (14. c.) Vol. 3: The
Green Manifesto tries to deal
with this question. It unfolds the weaknesses and strengths in the
celibate Empire. It points to the necessary strategies and the manner
in which they have to be confronted. It should not be forgotten that
the Christian Empire does not thrive on spreading knowledge, but on
spreading propaganda – which is mostly anti-scientific matter designed
to asphyxiate as well as to inspire.
One of the centrepieces of this resistance to the RC church is to be
found in the question of sex or, more particularly, the question of
fertility or reproduction. Why this is the case should be clear from
the works already recited on this website. In any event (14.d.) Vol. 4: Towards
Criminology of Children in Ireland, reiterates the story – if not
the history -- of child crime in Ireland. It also aspires to be
instructive in resisting and breaking the infinite cycle of
reproduction and indoctrination, which the RC church has perpetuated
among the Irish people.
=== ===
With these items tending towards an Irish Criminology now dealt with,
the more serious work of this Website is complete. The analysis now
relies upon honest hearts that agree with it to orientate their
thoughts to action.
=== ===
In the meantime -- by way of work-in-progress -- a growing number of
topics surround the extending area of Irishcriminology. From time to
time certain aspects of these topics appear with greater focus than
before. Some of these topics have to be left on a long burner. Items
like suicide, domestic violence, juvenile disorientation, social
demoralisation, and comparative and international criminology.
Other topics, like the ones that follow, are best treated by way of
addenda, i.e. as independent additions to any analysis of crime or
punishment, but in themselves are not an analysis and rarely presume
to take on such a role. These topics more often than not attempt to
entertain rather than teach. They are grouped together as follows:
15. Addenda
1. Crime, Catholicism and Feminism in Ireland
2. Memorable Irish Murders
3. The Irish American Murders
4. Memorable Irish Trials
5. The Carlow Calendar
6. The Criminology of Selected Irish Writers:
These six items, originally grouped under Addenda By Way Of Religion,
Law and Literature, were not selected entirely at random, no more than
Religion, Law and Literature are separate from the same cultural
undercurrents that keep them buoyant.
In Irish antiquity they will tell you that the Aos Dana, or some such
body, when they crawled up off the forest floor, consisted of such and
such. They'll find a place for the Poet, for the Priest and for the
Lawyer. Even if it isn't' true, they will make it up as they go along
and swear to its truth as fervently as they will assure you that
Jackie Charlton's 'Irish' soccer team is as pure as an Aryan's blood
test, the ability to 'make believe' being one of the strongest driving
forces in the Irish personality. And given its ignoble history, such a
little device as making things seem otherwise than they actually are,
was seamlessly installed as a fundamental prop of the Irish persona.
What they won't tell you, however, is that the poet hated the lawyers,
because the lawyers, serving the same masters were always in the
pocket of the priests, and this left the poets with an uncomfortable
draft up their numerical rear.
The ability of the priests to subvert and convert was well known. They
are equally gifted in such virtues as 'weeding out' and 'stamping on'
personnel who might be distract the Holy Office in its mission. And
that is why one will not find mention of a 'social scientist' in the
Aos Dana. The priests, once they couldn't subvert or convert them,
they weeded them out and stamped all over their super egos. This cut
down the opposition.
Do these things have a bearing on modern Irish life?
Most assuredly Religion, Law and Literature are no more independent
now than they were in antiquity. Their interconnection is as
historical as the concerns which each of them feel called upon to
James Joyce, who was emasculated by his compatriots, knew more about
these interconnections than any 'Irish social scientist'. Out of shame
he fled the country of his ignoble kind and hid himself in Europe. In
Ireland, ironically, it is the litterateurs who are the best
commentators, for they are more apt to be native and passionate. With
such an unusual order of the 'sciences' obtaining, the following
topic, (15.1)
Crime, Catholicism and Feminism in Ireland is somewhat of an anachronism, and has
to be fitted (awkwardly) into a culture still obsessed with miracles,
Papal visits, saints' relics and 'moving statues'. Nevertheless, when
pitted with its opposite, that is, the suppression of the secular
voice, it looms large and as an intervening strategy, it remains
devastatingly pertinent. What the RC church has done to Irish women
has never been documented adequately or criticised comprehensively. In
creating Irish motherhood, however, the Roman church, perforce of its
'increase-and-multiply' logic -- (celibacy notwithstanding) -- has had
to stereotype its projection of Irish womanhood as well. These
stereotypes have remained as static as church teaching down the ages.
As stereotypes, both their predictability as well as their
church-control can be relied upon – stereotypes that will remain as
cultural givens unless and until they are opposed.
Besides religious matters, Addenda also gather legal and literary pursuits
into the criminological enterprise.
(15.2) Memorable Irish Murders,
for example, tries to give depth and perspective to the historical
murders rather than the history of murder. It is a small collection of
cases, which have never been written about before. Its companion, (15. 3) The
Irish American Murders contains a small selection of cases dealing with actors who are
Irish/American or who lived there for some time before returning to
Ireland. These are few in number but nevertheless evince an interest
on that account.
In a similar vein (15. 4) Memorable
Irish Trials are another rare
event. This may be for several good reasons. By their nature all
trials are memorable, so much so , in fact, that we don't bother
reading them on our daily newspaper. Also, memorable historical trials
were treated like the press generally treated common-or-garden
executions, Further, memorable trials are either written about already
or they are difficult to access in any comprehensive way and,
oftentimes, very hard to piece together. Moreover, the trouble with
trials on memorable occasions is that they merely contain evidence. As
such they do not venture into personalities, habits, customs, the
history or traditions of the people involved. And however little a
trial may capture of past events, it remains empty of future events.
In the nineteenth century this meant that even if a newspaper carried
a decent account of a trial, nothing of the petition following it, the
correspondence that sustained it, or the details of execution that
finished it, could be found in the trial material, necessitating a
further effort on the part of the researcher. This, of course, means a
total reliance upon the archival material: and the least said about
that the better. The above constraints notwithstanding, this volume
contains a small selection of such trials.
(15. 5) The Carlow Calendar is a compilation of executions occurring in Carlow County over the
period of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Inspired by friends,
it unearths in a potted way the concerns of past murderers and how
they were dealt with in what came to be – after the 1798 rebellion –
one of the least disturbed counties in Ireland. It started with a few
fellows expounding on Lucy Sly, the last hanging of a woman in Carlow,
then a few other names were being dropped in rapid inaccurate
succession. The upshot is the compilation of this record, which, if it
doesn't do much else, it will help – one hopes – to keep the record
(15.6) The Criminology of Selected Irish Writers attempts briefly to demonstrate the
struggle for freedom within the context of the Christian conquest
through the voice of Irish writers.
Needless to say, everything compiled in this Website is the direct
product of the author, who carries full responsibility for the force
of the opinions expressed, the inaccuracies of fact (for I am sure
there are many), as well as the irritating grammatical minutiae, which
gets up everybody's nose. For all these, my apologies.
Finally, (16)
The ABC of Irish Criminology is an amusing simplification of most of the foregoing items on this
Webpage. It also closes the criminological concerns and undertakings
arising out of a contract foolishly entered into fado fado --which
contract has now been unilaterally discharged by the author.
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text:
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Closing schools during an influenza pandemic could prevent one in seven cases of flu, British researchers said on Wednesday in a study that suggests such action would have less impact than some other estimates.
But they said school closings would create significant hardships for working parents, who might be forced to create informal daycare arrangements that would undo efforts to contain the spread of flu.
"We find school closings would be less effective than some studies have suggested," said Dr. Simon Cauchemez of Imperial College London, whose study appears in the journal Nature.
"The main effect would be to slow and flatten the outbreak -- so the numbers becoming ill in the worst week of the outbreak might be reduced by up to 40 percent, reducing peak demand on health-care systems," Cauchemez said in an e-mail.
Health experts almost universally agree that a global epidemic -- a pandemic -- of influenza is overdue. The most likely cause now is H5N1 avian influenza, which could evolve into a form that passes easily from person to person.
Government estimates suggest vaccines and drugs will not be enough to slow or prevent a flu pandemic. The U.S. pandemic plan recommends closing schools and implementing strategies to limit social contact as a way to limit transmission.
If done quickly, such widespread measures combined with drugs and vaccines might reduce transmission in a large city by as much as 80 percent, by one estimate.
But such estimates are often based on widely varying assumptions, Cauchemez said. He and colleagues instead used public health data from France that compared flu transmission when school was in session and during school holidays.
They found school holidays prevent 16 to 18 percent of seasonal influenza cases. When extrapolated to a pandemic, they said prolonged school closure might reduce the cumulative number of cases by 13 to 17 percent, and peak attack rates by 39 to 45 percent.
But that impact would be reduced if it proved too difficult to keep children apart. "If we want the policy to have an impact, children must be kept relatively isolated and not cared for in groups," Cauchemez said.
U.S. cities that quickly closed schools and discouraged public gatherings during the great flu pandemic of 1918 -- which killed tens of millions of people globally -- had as many as 50 percent fewer deaths than cities that took less decisive measures, according to a recent study.
Cauchemez said an especially deadly pandemic might provide strong incentives for people to keep their children at home. "It might nonetheless be difficult for a lot of working parents to be absent from their work for months to look after their kids," he said.
Cauchemez said a prolonged outbreak might force working parents to put their children into informal daycare settings, a risk governments need to consider when they formulate pandemic flu plans.
"We can't predict how people will behave, but we need to be aware that if this happens, school closings might have no effect at all on flu transmission," he said.
H5N1 bird flu only rarely infects people now. It has killed 239 out of 379 infected, according to the World Health Organization, but could easily mutate into a form that one person could pass to another, and governments around the world are preparing for the possibility.
Editing by Maggie Fox and Eric Walsh
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

subset: commoncrawl


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text:
Hamish Blake wins Gold Logie
THE cat might have been let out of the bag a bit early, but that didn't take the shine off Hamish Blake's Gold Logie.
The news got out online a bit early online about the radio and TV personality's big win, not that it was much of a surprise with Blake being the odds favourite to take out the golden statuette.
"If you hold it up to your ear you can hear Bert (Newton). It's like a seashell," he joked.
"I know there's a lot of people at mum's house watching this; she's there as well."
The Gap Year co-host beat out some stiff competition including last year's Gold Logie winner Karl Stefanovic and Silver Logie winners Asher Keddie and Adam Hills.
But Australian TV's night of nights was nearly overshadowed by One Direction, the British boy band currently taking the world by storm.
It was the loudest, wildest start to the Logies in recent memory thanks to the five lads, who greeted screaming fans on the red carpet with a live performance of their hit What Makes You Beautiful.
Opening presenter Adam Hills wasted no time kicking things off, literally, when he ripped his left leg out from his pants in a tribute to Angelina Jolie's much talked about Oscars stance.
Hills appeared to be channelling Ricky Gervais with his jokes, taking aim at everyone from Sonia Kruger to The Wiggles to reality TV.
The funny man took home his first Silver Logie for Most Popular Presenter for musical quiz show Spicks and Specks and his chat show Adam Hills in Gordon St Tonight.
It was a night of firsts for some and continuing success for others.
Packed to the Rafters star Hugh Sheridan took home his third Silver Logie in a row, which he dedicated to the Port Adelaide Football Club, and Better Homes and Gardens won its 10th statuette.
Asher Keddie won her second Silver Logie in a row for her performances in Offspring and Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo.
The Bondi Rescue lifeguards took home their fourth Logie for Most Popular Factual Program, continuing their domination of the category.
And just a day before the new series debuts, The Block took home its first Logie for Most Popular Reality Program.
Blake and his partner in crime Andy Lee won their first-ever Logie for their "working holiday" Hamish & Andy's Gap Year and Underbelly: Razor star Chelsie Preston Crayford who won the Graham Kennedy Award for Most Outstanding New Talent.
TV newcomer Melissa Bergland, of Winners & Losers, had the enviable honour, if you're a teenage girl anyway, of having her Logie Award given to her by One Direction.
There were also musical performances by Flo Rida, Tony Bennett and The Voice Australia's Seal and Delta Goodrem.
Music journalist Molly Meldrum was also honoured with an induction into the TV Week Logies Hall of Fame.
One Direction closed the show with their hit One Thing.
Full list of winners:
Gold Logie - Most Popular Personality on TV
Adam Hills (Spicks and Specks, ABC1/Adam Hills In Gordon St Tonight, ABC1)
Asher Keddie (Nina Proudman, Offspring, Network Ten /Ita Buttrose, Paper Giants: The Birth Of Cleo, ABC1)
Carrie Bickmore (The Project, Network Ten)
Esther Anderson (Charlie Buckton, Home and Away, Channel 7)
Hamish Blake (Hamish & Andy's Gap Year, Channel 9)
Karl Stefanovic (Today, Channel 9)
Silver Logie - Most Popular Actor
Daniel MacPherson (Jack Keenan, Wild Boys, Channel 7)
Eddie Perfect (Mick Holland, Offspring, Network Ten)
Erik Thomson (Dave Rafter, Packed to the Rafters, Channel 7)
Hugh Sheridan (Ben Rafter, Packed to the Rafters, Channel 7)
Ray Meagher (Alf Stewart, Home and Away, Channel 7)
Silver Logie - Most Popular Actress
Asher Keddie (Nina Proudman, Offspring, Network Ten /Ita Buttrose, Paper Giants: The Birth Of Cleo, ABC1)
Danielle Cormack (Kate Leigh, Underbelly: Razor, Nine Network /Angela Travis, East West 101, SBS)
Esther Anderson (Charlie Buckton, Home and Away, Channel Seven)
Jessica Marais (Rachel Rafter, Packed to the Rafters, Channel Seven)
Rebecca Gibney (Julie Rafter, Packed to the Rafters, Channel Seven)
Silver Logie - Most Popular Presenter
Adam Hills (Spicks And Specks, ABC1/Adam Hills In Gordon St Tonight, ABC1)
Carrie Bickmore (The Project, Network Ten)
Chrissie Swan (The Circle, Network Ten)
Hamish Blake (Hamish and Andy's Gap Year, Channel 9)
Karl Stefanovic (Today, Channel 9)
Most Popular New Male Talent
Dan Ewing (Heath Braxton, Home and Away, Channel 7)
James Mason (Chris Pappas, Neighbours, Network Ten)
Peter Kuruvita (My Sri Lanka With Peter Kuruvita, SBS)
Steve Peacocke (Darryl "Brax" Braxton, Home and Away, Channel 7)
Tom Wren (Dr Doug Graham, Winners & Losers, Channel 7)
Most Popular New Female Talent
Anna McGahan (Nellie Cameron, Underbelly: Razor, Channel 9)
Chelsie Preston Crayford (Tilly Devine, Underbelly: Razor, Channel 9)
Demi Harman (Sasha Bezmel, Home and Away, Channel 7)
Melissa Bergland (Jenny Gross, Winners & Losers, Channel 7)
Tiffiny Hall (Trainer, The Biggest Loser Australia, Network Ten)
Most Popular Drama Series
Home and Away (Channel 7)
Offspring (Network Ten)
Packed to the Rafters (Channel 7)
Underbelly: Razor (Chanel 9)
Winners & Losers (Channel 7)
Most Popular Light Entertainment Program
Australia's Got Talent (Channel 7)
Hamish & Andy's Gap Year (Channel 9)
Spicks and Specks (ABC1)
Sunrise (Channel 7)
The Project (Network Ten)
Most Popular Lifestyle Program
Better Homes and Gardens (Channel 7)
Getaway (Channel Nine)
iFISH (Network Ten)
Ready Steady Cook (Network Ten)
Selling Houses Australia Extreme (LifeStyle Channel)
Most Popular Sports Program
2011 AFL Grand Final (Network Ten)
Before The Game (Network Ten)
The AFL Footy Show (Channel 9)
The NRL Footy Show (Channel 9)
Wide World of Sports (Channel 9)
Most Popular Reality Program
Beauty and The Geek Australia (Channel 7)
MasterChef Australia (Network Ten)
My Kitchen Rules (Channel 7)
The Block (Channel 9)
The X Factor Australia (Channel 7)
Most Popular Factual Program
Bondi Rescue (Network Ten)
Bondi Vet (Network Ten)
Border Security: Australia's Front Line (Channel 7)
RPA (Channel 9)
World's Strictest Parents (Channel 7)
Silver Logie - Most Outstanding Drama Series, Miniseries or Telemovie
Cloudstreet (Showcase)
Offspring (Network Ten)
Paper Giants: The Birth Of Cleo (ABC1)
The Slap (ABC1)
Underbelly: Razor (Channel 9)
Silver Logie - Most Outstanding Actor
Alex Dimitriades (The Slap, ABC1)
David Wenham (Killing Time, TV1)
Don Hany (East West 101, SBS)
Geoff Morrell (Cloudstreet, Showcase)
Rob Carlton (Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo, ABC1)
Silver Logie - Most Outstanding Actress
Asher Keddie (Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo, ABC1)
Diana Glenn (Killing Time, TV1)
Essie Davis (The Slap, ABC1)
Kat Stewart (Offspring, Network Ten)
Melissa George (The Slap, ABC1)
Graham Kennedy Award for Most Outstanding New Talent
Anna McGahan (Underbelly: Razor, Channel 9)
Chelsie Preston Crayford (Underbelly: Razor, Channel 9)
Hamish Macdonald (Senior Foreign Correspondent, Network Ten)
Hamish Michael (Crownies, ABC1)
Melissa Bergland (Winners & Losers, Channel 7)
Most Outstanding News Coverage
Lockyer Valley Flood (Brisbane News, Channel 7)
Qantas Grounded (Sky News National, Sky News Australia)
Skype Scandal (Ten News at Five, Network Ten)
The Queensland Floods (Nine News, Channel 9)
Unfinished Business (SBS World News Australia, SBS)
Most Outstanding Public Affairs Report
A Bloody Business (Four Corners/Sarah Ferguson, ABC1)
After The Deluge: The Valley (Paul Lockyer, ABC1)
Rescue 500 (Sunday Night, Channel 7)
Salma In The Square (Foreign Correspondent/Mark Corcoran, ABC1)
Tour Of Duty: Australia's Secret War (Network Ten)
Most Outstanding Light Entertainment Program
Australia's Got Talent (Channel 7)
Gruen Planet (ABC1)
Spicks and Specks (ABC1)
Talkin' 'Bout Your Generation (Network Ten)
The Project (Network Ten)
Most Outstanding Sports Coverage
2011 Australian Open Tennis (Channel 7)
2011 Bathurst 1000 (Channel 7)
2011 Melbourne Cup Carnival (Channel 7)
State Of Origin III (Channel 9)
Tour de France 2011 (SBS)
Most Outstanding Children's Program
Camp Orange: Wrong Town, (Nickelodeon)
Lockie Leonard (Channel 9)
My Place (ABC3)
Saturday Disney (Channel 7)
Scope (Network Ten)
Most Outstanding Factual Program
Go Back To Where You Came From (SBS)
Leaky Boat (ABC1)
Mrs Carey's Concert (ABC1)
Outback Fight Club (SBS)
Tony Robinson Explores Australia (The History Channel)


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