23 June 2022
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) has called on government to respond immediately, with specific actions, to the distressing information contained in the Irish Travellers’ Access to Justice (ITAJ) report released this morning.
ICCL Executive Director Liam Herrick said:
“The ITAJ report shows that the institutional and societal racism against Travellers is reproduced in the justice system, at all levels. There can be little doubt that the criminalisation of nomadism and ill-conceived policies of assimilation have fed into societal racism and that must be addressed. The government must act decisively, now, to unpick decades of damage.”
Many of ICCL’s long-standing calls, such as for hate crime legislation, for inspections of garda custody cells, and for recording of ethnicity during garda operations, would address some of the issues raised in this report.
The report contains extremely worrying statistics on garda custody, including that 64% of Travellers who had recently been in custody said they did not feel safe, and 81% saying they did not have adequate access to medication. ICCL has long called for an independent rights-based inspection regime for garda custody, as well as for any place where people experience detention. We have also called for the right to access a lawyer and/or medical treatment to be properly protected. These concerning statistics underline the importance of prioritising these measures.
There is a dearth of official data on how frequently Travellers are targeted by police but this report makes clear that Travellers consider they have been targets of racial profiling. We reiterate our call for ethnicity to be recorded during all garda operations, including stop-and-search. We also call on government to deal with reports that Travellers experience garda harassment; threats to abuse power; garda provocation, gardaí deliberately escalating conflict; and degrading treatment during stop-and-search.
The proportion of Travellers who have experienced home raids is very high. Of those, only 11% said the gardaí presented a warrant. ICCL agrees with the researchers’ recommendation that ethnicity be recorded during garda home raids.
60% of Travellers believe that hate crime against Travellers is a very serious problem, underlining the need for legislation which is currently in the works to be expedited. It is important that Travellers, as well as all communities affected by hate crime, are consulted at every stage of this process.
Travellers report overt racism from An Garda Síochána and criminal justice professionals. ICCL calls for mandatory anti bias training (conscious and unconscious) for the judiciary and gardaí to tackle this.
There was a worrying trend of Traveller victims and suspects being unable to understand much of what was said in the Courtroom, underlining ICCL’s previous recommendations that the Victims’ Rights Act must be fully implemented in Ireland, including the right to clear and accessible information.
ICCL fully supports the researchers’ key recommendations on gathering data on ethnicity, on the development of a Traveller-specific criminal justice strategy, and on the establishment of a robust and effective complaints mechanism.
ENDS/
Notes:
In the ITAJ report, Travellers report feeling they must prove their innocence and that bail conditions are unfair. They feel overpoliced as suspects and underpoliced as victims. Only 17% of Traveller victims of crime think the gardaí are effective in tackling crime against Travellers. Just over half of victims felt that the fact that they were a Traveller had an impact on the case. A majority of those supporting victims stated that they heard anti-Traveller language used in the court or courthouse by lawyers, gardaí.
Read about ICCL’s work on hate crime: https://www.iccl.ie/resources/submission/iccl-submission-on-proposed-hate-crime-laws/
Read about all our relevant calls in our recent submission to the UN Human Rights Committee: https://www.iccl.ie/report/new-report-on-civil-and-political-rights-in-ireland/
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) is Ireland’s oldest independent human rights campaigning organisation. We monitor, educate and campaign to secure human rights for everyone in Ireland.
For comment: Liam Herrick or Doireann Ansbro
For media queries: sinead.nolan@iccl.ie