MP demands Clery Act for Ireland

Patricial Campbell

Sinn Fein MP Michelle Gildernew recently demanded that the ‘Clery Act’ be adopted as a blueprint in Northern Ireland. This piece of American legislation requires closer co-operation with the police and that institutions of higher education must disclose campus security information including crime statistics. On the face of it many would view this as acceptable in a bid to crack down on crime. Initiatives around crime can usually be relied on to have populist appeal. However, the implications of such legislation are much wider.

It is true to say that ‘bad cases make bad law’. The Irish community in Britain know what this means recalling how the oppressive ‘Prevention of Terrorism Act’ was introduced on the back of public outrage following the Guildford pub bombing. The ‘Clery Act’ was introduced in America after a young woman called Jeanne Clery was sexually assaulted and murdered in a Pennsylvania university campus. Public outrage at such a crime is justifiable but what is not justifiable is the exploitation of public outrages for political ends, hence the introduction of draconian laws, which undermine fundamental individual freedoms.

American critics complain that the Act widens the definition of crime to cover codes of behaviours. They expressed the view that the definition for crime extended to include anonymous accusations around issues of personal behaviour. There is also the view that such legislation diverts resources from education into administration to an almost obsessive intelligence gathering. It can be argued that such an Act helps promote the ‘big brother’ state with its blatant disregard for civil liberties.

It is disappointing that a Sinn Fein MP demands American style legislation. America is a country country with a higher number of prisoners per capita that any country in the developed world, a country that use the death penalty to execute people with mental health problems, a country that operate a brutal and unlawful detention centre in Camp X-Ray. This is not the type of society we want to use as a role model. Ireland needs justice and democracy, not more repressive laws.

Patricial Campbell...6 Feb 2003