Crime And Punishment in Twentieth Century Ireland

In Volumes 2 and 3 of the present series Seamus Breathnach traces the initial steps necessary to complete the revolution begun by the President's Commission. In doing this he reveals the systematized neglect of the CJS in the Republic of Ireland for years 1950-80. In eight lectures he delineates the Republic's inability to get its act together or to engage the terms or significance of the '67 landmark - an inability that is anchored both in a deep religious resistance to the secular social sciences as well as an exaggerated estimation of the criminal lawyer as social commentator. From this study it appears that the first step for criminologists is to see the CJS as a totality - to see it as a social process clamoring to be rescued from the spokesmen of the discrete agencies that comprise it.