Posted November 04, 2011
The Socio-Legal Research Centre at Dublin City University will host the third in its “Law on…” seminar series on Thursday November 17th 2011 at 6.30pm.
The theme of this seminar will be “Law on…Risk” and it will focus on risk assessment in the criminal process in the context of mentally disordered offenders, persons seeking parole and temporary release.
The seminar will be chaired by The Honourable Mr Justice Roderick Murphy of the High Court (Judge in Residence at the School of Law and Government, DCU) and it will be addressed by Kris Gledhill, Lecturer in Law, University of Auckland, New Zealand, Áine Hynes, Chairperson of the Irish Mental Health Lawyers’ Association and Mark Wilson, Probation Service.
Certification of attendance for the purposes of the CPD scheme will be available to attendees on request (2 hours).
The event is free of charge but prior registration is requested by emailing .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
See speaker profiles and further information below.
Measures designed to prevent individuals committing future crimes are increasingly part of legal regimes in common law jurisdictions, typically made in relation to sexual offenders or violent offenders and typically imposed on the basis of evidence that the offender poses a risk of further offending that is unacceptable. These measures may be in the form of community monitoring or restrictions, or both; but they may also extend to preventive detention. In addition, questions of early release on parole or of release from a psychiatric hospital are increasingly becoming dominated by the question of whether the prisoner or patient poses too great of a risk to be released. One of the many questions arising is the extent to which courts are alert to the difficulties of making such assessments and the rigour of the process followed.
Kris Gledhill, whose practice at the English Bar included the rights of detained prisoners and patients and who appeared in several precedent-setting cases in this area, is now an academic lawyer at the University of Auckland (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)). Risk assessment is one of his research interests, and he has recently authored an article in a new comparative criminal law journal that outlined the difficulties in the area and compared the poor-quality jurisprudence of the English courts compared to those in New Zealand in this area. (See 1 JCCL 78-104 – available to download here)
Kris is interested in hearing from anyone who is interested in developing a comparative text on this issue, namely a text with chapters that deal with the extent to which risk assessment is becoming a central part of the criminal justice regime in the various common law jurisdictions and descriptions given of the procedural regime that ensures due process and the extent to which the courts are taking their roles seriously.
Áine Hynes is a partner in St. John Solicitors. She is Chair of the Irish Mental Health Lawyers Association, and of the Dublin Solicitors Bar Association Mental Health and Capacity Committee. She also sits on the Law Society Task force on Mental Health and Capacity.
Aine has represented clients detained under the Mental Health Act 2001 and under the Criminal Law (Insanity) Act 2006 since November 2006. She acted in the first cases to be reviewed under the legislation. Aine has been involved in significant high court cases taken under Article 40 of the Constitution and with reference to Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights relating to the lawful detention of patients.
She has also acted in Judicial Review proceedings on behalf of detained patients, most notably the case of JB v Mental Health (Criminal Law) Review Board, Ireland and the Attorney General (judgment available here). This case concerned the refusal of the Review Board to order a conditional discharge from the Central Mental Hospital in circumstances where the patient no longer required medication or in-patient treatment. The Review Board considered that it could not order a conditional discharge from the Central Mental Hospital in circumstances where the patient no longer required medication or in-patient treatment as the Criminal Law (Insanity) Act did not allow for a recall to the Central Mental Hospital in the event of a breach of the conditions of discharge. The case ultimately resulted in the amendment of the Criminal Law (Insanity) Act 2006.
Áine’s presentation will focus on the balance between an individual’s right to release versus the public interest. She will refer to cases in which she has acted to illustrate how the balance has been struck in those particular cases. Áine will also address the issue of risk in the context of patients detained in the Central Mental Hospital on the basis of sexual offending. She will illustrate the difficulties encountered by those patients seeking release where the patient is considered to pose too great a risk to be released.
Mark Wilson is the Operational Regional Manager for the Probation Service for Dublin North and the North East. He has extensive knowledge and expertise in the area of risk assessment in probation work, especially in relation to high risk offenders generally, sex offenders, life sentence prisoners, parole, post-custody supervision, and the wider range of risk assessment procedures and structures used by the Probation Service. Mark has held lead strategic responsibilities in this area on behalf of the Probation Service, including forging critical interagency and international links. His presentation at the Law on Risk seminar will be based on his experience and expertise.