Editorial: Bail policy is far too lenient in Northern Ireland, as is prison sentencing

Stormont politicians love to talk tough on crime but as our front page story shows, they preside over chronic weakness.

An on-the-run murderer, James Meehan, has absconded from prison twice and is still at large in a bolthole in the Republic of Ireland.

The Ulster Unionist MLA Doug Beattie is right to say that the justice system is broken and that the system has been “inept" in handling Meehan.

It assuredly is. But think about the fact that Meehan was ever even given release after the brutal killing of a Londonderry man, Jim McFadden, in 2007. His term was ‘life’ but the so-called tariff – the minimum spent in jail – was a trifling 14 years.

Northern Ireland is not alone in having such ridiculous terms for murder – the rest of the UK, much of Europe and parts of North America are similar. You don’t have to support the death penalty, you don’t even have to believe that ‘life should mean life,’ to think that a spell in jail of 14 years or even, say, 18 years is far too light. Actually time spent in prison has been edging up closer to 20 years in murder cases but should be an absolute minimum of 30 years for murdering another human being.

Part of the problem is that NI, again like the rest of the UK, does not have enough prison space. Yet politicians call for stiffer sentences, albeit only for certain crimes such as sexual ones or for racist attacks.

We think there needs to be stiffer sentencing in a range of offences, including killing people via recklessness in driving a vehicle.

The News Letter some years ago reported on the disgraceful, weak bail policy that operates in NI, and the way in which dissident republican terrorists, among others, were skipping bail almost with impunity. If they were even detained, which often they were not.

The Meehan farce is a disgrace, but not a surprise.