Sentencing and violent crime
Senator O’Donnell seeks a debate on sentencing, arguing that punishments should deter violent crime.
-----on our streets. I am asking a question. Punishments must fit the crimes. They must be a deterrent to crime - they must be at a level to be a deterrent. There is one murder a week in this country. We have had 62 violent murders in the past year. I request that the Minister for Justice and Equality come into the House. A conversation must begin, through politics, about what we can do to ensure sentencing is a deterrent to crime in terms of future assailants, future violent crime and people having had to leave this country without their children because they have been knifed on the street. I am sick of it.