The Gazette 1973

will have a law degree. If the degree is from outside

Northern Ireland a short course on Northern Ireland

law will be provided. Special provision exists for gradu-

ates in subjects other than law and for those with no

degree at all. After graduation prospective practitioners

enter an Institute of Professional Legal Studies, which

will be part of Queen's University but separate from

the law faculty. The one-year course here is strictly

vocational, concentrating on the practical application

of legal knowledge and techniques and the develop-

ment of skills needed to practise. This course is followed

for solicitors by three years of "limited practice" and

for barristers, by pupillage. The final stage is the on-

going one of continuing education.

If such a structure were adopted here it would mean

a dramatic improvement. Legal education in the Re-

public has long been in a disgraceful condition, many

of the faults stemming from lack of co-ordination

between the Universities and the Professional bodies.

One example of this is that the Benchers decide the

course for most of the King's Inn's exams but the

lectures are given in the Universities. Since the Univer-

sities are autonomous the course in the University might

cover quite different ground. Even if the courses were

precisely the same serious problems arise because the

student must take two sets of examinations. A Trinity

Student doing the four-year B.A. in Legal Science does

16 subjects and the same number of exams. If he is

also doing Bar exams he does another 14—there are no

exemptions whatsoever. If he is doing solicitors erams

he must do 13 more law subjects plus two Irish papers

and book-keeping—32 in all. In addition if he is serving

his apprenticeship at the same time he is supposed to

be learning the necessary professional and practical

skills while doing all the exams.

Anomalies like this abound in relation to profes-

sional training. In U.C.D. many complaints are made

also about the degree, among them the bad conditions,

terrible staff-student ratios and lecturers who know no

Irish law. Added to complaints like this are factors

such as the high cost of becoming a qualified lawyer.

All in all it could be said that legal education in

the Republic is much worse than in the North. The

effective teaching of University law is hampered by

bad facilities and conditions and by the excessive out-

side claims on the time of the student. The professional

bodies are not adequately involved in profiding pro-

fessional training. The victims of the present disorgan-

ised structure are firstly the students themselves, but

most of all the unfortunate public on whom they are

set loose unequipped for their job.

A wide-ranging examination of legal education in

Ireland is urgently needed.

The Irish Times,

29 October 1973

Judges disinterested in penal reform

Have judges become too isolated? For four days last

week penal reformers and expert prison administrators

met at York to discuss how to keep more people out of

prison. There was no disagreement on the goal. Home

Office officials, probation officers, prison governors, and

community workers were all agreed that too many

people were being sent to prison.

If there had been any doubts, the first paper pre-

sented to the conference would have dispelled them.

Prepared by a Home Office research team the paper set

out in detail what reformers had stated in more general

terms for years : too many alcoholic, mentally handi-

capped, mentally ill, and homeless people were being

sent to prison.

Too many homelesj on mission

One problem which disturbed the conference was the

judiciary's silence on penal policies. What was the use

of penal reformers and administrators meeting to dis-

cuss ways of keeping men out of prison if the men who

put people in prison, the judges, were absent?

One High Court judge, Sir Brian MacKenna, did

attend the conference but he agreed that there was too

little contact between judges and the people who had to

carry out the sentences. Sir Kenneth Younger, chairman

of the Howard League for Penal Reform which organ-

ised the conference, criticised the judges for what he

regarded as a "self-imposed apartheid" in the public

discussion of sentencing policies.

Judges ignorant of penology

It was not just the silence of the bench which dis-

turbed Lord Gardiner, the former Lord Chancellor, but

their ignorance. Judges were well trained in the rule of

law and how to sum up to a jury but were not required

to take any examination in criminology, penology, or

psychology.

There have been a few reforms. Some judges now

visit prisons on the special one-week training courses

which were established by the Lord Chancellor in 1968.

The Parole Board has allowed one or two High Court

and Crown Court judges a better insight into prisons.

But what, rightly, was of more concern to the confer-

ence was not arranging more prison visits for judges,

valuable though they would be, but pointing to the need

for some form of machinery which would allow collec-

tive consultation between judges and prison and proba-

tion officials who have to administer the sentences

imposed by the courts.

Magistrates and Prisons

Magistrates probably have more contact with prisons

than judges. Local magistrates not only serve on proba-

tion committees but also on the boards of visitors which

act as prison disciplinary courts and ombudsmen. More

people are sent to prison by magistrates than judges,

but, because the offenders whom judges send to prison

serve longer sentences, they occupy more space.

What became clear at the conference was the new

Government departments with whom penal reformers

now have to tangle. In earlier days the sole target used

to be the Home Office. Now several departments are

involved. If the isolation of the judiciary is to be

resolved, the Lord Chancellor will have to be lobbied.

If the increase in detoxification units to help alcoholics

remains too slow it is no longer the responsibility of the

Home Office but the Department of Health and Social

Security instead. If there are too few homeless hostels,

the main hope for reform rests with persuading more

local councils to build them.

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