Waste of Resources Should society decriminalise the possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use? I would argue yes. I have personally spent five mornings in court with a young man who was charged with possession of cannabis valued at €2. The prosecuting Garda also spent five mornings in court. The young man was… Read more »

Considering how we begin to end violence in society, Allegra McLeod, from University of Chicago, urges us to “expand our understanding of violence beyond individualized disorder and the immediate scene of interpersonal harm” and unearth its political and economic roots. This can be difficult when a victim has experienced extreme violence and long-lasting harm. But the ambition of criminal justice systems should be the tempering of violence in society and not just meting out more violence in response to the initial offense. Louk Hulsman, a Dutch criminologist, warns that we create a counter-reality when we only understand an individual in the context of their offense, completely isolated from “his environment, his friends, his family, the material substratum of his world.”