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Reflections on
Irish Criminology
Conversations with Criminologists
Orla Lynch · Yasmine Ahmed

Helen Russell · Kevin Hosford
Reflections on Irish Criminology
Orla Lynch · Yasmine Ahmed · Helen Russell ·
Kevin Hosford
Reflections on Irish
Criminology
Orla Lynch Yasmine Ahmed
Department of Sociology and Department of Sociology and
Criminology Criminology
University College Cork University College Cork
Cork, Ireland Cork, Ireland
Helen Russell Kevin Hosford

Department of Sociology and Department of Sociology and
Criminology Criminology
University College Cork University College Cork
Cork, Ireland Cork, Ireland
ISBN 978-3-030-60592-6 ISBN 978-3-030-60593-3 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60593-3
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
Cover illustration: Contributor: Zoonar GmbH/Alamy Stock Photo
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgments
Thank you to all the participants who gave so generously of their time to
participate in these conversations.
The original transcripts have been edited for clarity and brevity. All
mistakes and omissions and (mis)interpretations are solely the fault of the
authors.
v
Contents
1 Criminology in Ireland, the Rise of a Discipline 1
2 In Conversation with Prof. Ian O’Donnell 11
3 A Conversation with Dr Deirdre Healy 27
4 In Conversation with Prof. Claire Hamilton 41
5 In Conversation with Dr Jennifer O’Mahoney 55
6 In Conversation with Dr Cheryl Lawther 67
7 In Conversation with Prof. Shane Kilcommins 81
8 In Conversation with Prof. Mary Rogan 95
9 In Conversation with Dr Diarmuid Griffin 109
10 In Conversation with Prof. Maggie O’Neill 123
11 In Conversation with Prof. Shadd Maruna 139
vii
viii CONTENTS
Appendix A 159
Appendix B 161
Index 165
About the Authors
Dr. Orla Lynch is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Asc. Dean of

Graduate Studies at University College Cork, Ireland. Until 2015 she
was the Director of Teaching and a Lecturer in Terrorism Studies at the
Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the Univer-
sity of St Andrews, Scotland. Orla’s background is in International Secu-
rity Studies and Applied Psychology; her primary training is as a social
psychologist. She studied at both the University of St Andrews (M.Litt.)
and University College Cork (Ph.D.). Orla is a fellow with Hedayah, Abu
Dhabi and a Board member of RAN, Europe. She is also a RESOLVE
Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, an Anniversary Fellow
at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence and
an Academic Advisor for WAVE Trauma Centre Belfast. Orla’s current
research focuses on victimisation and political violence in relation to the
direct victims of violence, but also the broader psycho-social impact of
victimisation and the perpetrator–victim complex. To date, as PI, Orla
has secured almost e1.7 million in EU research funding, and over two
hundred thousand in IRCHSS, SRF and Enterprise Ireland f unding. Her
recent books include Applying Psychology: The Case of Terrorism and
Political Violence. (Blackwell with Carmel Joyce) Victims and Perpetra-
tors of Terrorism: Exploring Identities, Roles and Narratives (Ed. Rout-
ledge, London) Victims of Terrorism, a comparative and interdisciplinary
study (Ed. Palgrave, London) and International Perspectives on Terrorist
Victimisation: An interdisciplinary approach (Ed. Routledge London).
ix
x ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Yasmine Ahmed is a Ph.D. researcher and tutor at University College

Cork (UCC), Ireland, where she currently teaches modules on the
Psychology of Crime and Victimology to Criminology Students. She is
also the Module Coordinator for the Post Graduate Diploma in Trauma
studies in UCC. Yasmine studied Psychology (B.A.) at Università degli
Studi di Torino, Italy, and achieved a Masters in Criminology (M.A.)
at University College Cork. Her research examines Far-Right extremism
using mixed methods and draws on the theoretical contributions from
Framing theory, Narrative Theory and a WPR (‘What’s the problem
represented to be’) integrated approach. Her work also explores how
the academic literature diverges in its treatment of the far right and
jihadi extremism. Her research interests also include the role of narra-
tives of victimhood in the perpetuation of cycles of violence. Yasmine
is involved with the RAN (Radicalisation Awareness Network) a Euro-
pean Commission initiative and recently secured a postgraduate bursary
in UCC.
Helen Russell holds a B.Sc. Government and an M.A. Criminology

from University College Cork. Helen has worked as a research assis-
tant and part time lecturer in UCC over the past five years where she
teaches modules on Women, Coercive Confinement and Social Control in
Ireland, Trauma, and Political Violence. She has experience working on
research topics such as prisons, terrorism, radicalisation, politics and non-
political offending. Helen is currently a tutor with WAVE Trauma Centre
Belfast where she teaches on the Post Graduate Diploma in Trauma
Studies. In 2016 Helen was awarded the CACSSS Excellence Scholarship
for her M.A. in Criminology.
Kevin Hosford is a Ph.D. Candidate and tutor in the Department of

Sociology and Criminology at University College Cork. His doctoral
research adopts a mixed methods approach to exploring and under-
standing concepts of Cyberterrorism and Hacktivism. Kevin previously
completed a B.A. degree in criminology and holds certificates in Jour-
nalism, Media Production, and Computer Programming. Kevin has held
a number of research assistant posts in Sociology and Criminology and
recently contributed to the production of a joint Interpol, ECPAT
report titled: Towards a global indicator on unidentified victims in
child sexual exploitation material. His research interests include cultural
ABOUT THE AUTHORS xi
and motivational dimensions of internet-based activism, understandings

and constructions of the Darknet, and proactive approaches to digital-
criminality & Information Security.
CHAPTER 1
Criminology in Ireland, the Rise of a Discipline
Abstract The rise and rise of criminology in Ireland cannot be under-

stood by focusing only on the traditional disciplinary boundaries of the
field. As Prof. Maruna points out in this volume, we are all academic
magpies and criminology is our rendezvous discipline; it is this eclecticism
that gives Irish criminology its uniqueness. Most importantly, and a belief
that is shared by all the participants in this book, is that criminology in
Ireland is what it is and where it is because of the people; the researchers,
the teachers, the service users, the practitioners and the students. In this
volume we trace the lineage of some of Ireland’s criminologists, magpies
and purists alike, from their undergraduate studies to their appointment
as Chairs and Professors, we document their influences and their part-
nerships, their innovations and their ideologies. Through understanding
where the contributors are coming from we understand better how and
why they are where they are.
Keywords Discipline · Criminology · Absentee · Ireland · Boundaries
The uniqueness of Irish criminology is best summed up by reference

to the opening statement in one of the founding texts of the discipline
(Brewer et al. 1997b).
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2020
O. Lynch et al., Reflections on Irish Criminology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60593-3_1
2 O. LYNCH ET AL.
References to Ireland, even when it is to ordinary crime, are best to begin

with political history. (p. 1).
In the nearly twenty five years since this recommendation was made, it
has become a reality and captures what Maruna and McEvoy (2015) call
the intellectual ambitiousness that defines Irish criminology. Criminology
in Ireland has grown from what was once termed Ireland’s absentee
discipline (Kearns, 2020) to a multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary
undertaking that re-imagines the work of international criminology from
an Irish perspective.
Speaking at a conference in Mount Joy Prison in 2020, Prof. Ian
O’Donnell described criminology in Ireland as buoyant, having long
thrown off the label of Ireland’s absentee discipline (Kearns, 2020).
Having come a long way since its roots in the early 1970s where attempts
to stimulate research in the area were rejected by statutory organisations,
Ireland’s criminal justice agencies are now active creators and consumers
of research albeit some more ardent than others. Similarly, Hamilton,
Healy et al. (2015) in their seminal volume on criminology in Ireland
point out it is time to reconsider the Cinderella status of Irish criminology,
that as a discipline we have come of age.
However, criminology if not in name, then certainly in intellectual
spirit, has a long history on the island of Ireland. In 1993 Paul O’Ma-
hony pointed out that there was no strong tradition of criminological or
penological research in Ireland, namely because there was no university
department of criminology at that time. However, despite this a diversity
of individuals and disciplines contributed to and continue to contribute
to what has become the discipline of criminology and this legacy uniquely
defines the current scope and form of the field. To say there is an Irish
criminolog y is perhaps inaccurate, but criminology in Ireland as a disci-
pline is certainly unique. The field is very much informed by the history
of the Island, defined by the violence and the politics of the Troubles,
informed by our history of coercive confinement, and couched in an
interdisciplinary tradition.
However, until recently, Irish criminology as a disciplinary speciality
rarely featured in the international criminology literature despite a rich
and vibrant criminology community developing on the island (O’Don-
nell 2005). For example, according to a review of the European Journal
of Criminology (Smith 2013) between 2004 and 2012 there were no
1 CRIMINOLOGY IN IRELAND, THE RISE OF A DISCIPLINE 3
contributions by Irish authors.1 However, given where we started from,

we are not that far behind the curve. The first issue of the European
Journal of Criminology was published in 2004 and it is reasonable to
suggest that Ireland’s criminological awakening only occurred the 1990’s
so we are quite similar to our European neighbours (Smith 2013). But
unlike our European neighbours, criminology in Ireland was not seen as a
resource by the state and was not funded as such, and so its developmental
trajectory is both slower and more critical.
Despite the total absence of state funding (O’Donnell 2005) or
perhaps as a result of it, criminology in Ireland emerged thanks to the
work of a few key individuals and a persistence that has led to the devel-
opment of a vibrant and diverse academic criminology community on
the island. The early work of Paul O’Mahony (1993), Ciaran McCul-
lagh (1996), Ivana Bacik et al. (1998), Ian O’Donnell (1997), Caroline
Fennell (1993), and John Brewer et al. (1997a) can reasonably be said
to be the foundation stones for what was to come and more recently the
work of Hamilton, Healy et al. (2015) cemented the discipline as a key
part of Irish intellectual activity. In parallel to the research and theoretical
outputs that propelled the field forward, a parallel growth in academic
criminology programs and the emergence of criminology as a department
or discipline in a number of Irish higher education institutions embedded
criminology as a mainstay of Irish academia.
A key moment for criminology in the Republic of Ireland was the
development of the Institute of Criminology in 2000. Situated in the
Faculty of Law at University College Dublin (UCD) the Institute had
an emphasis on research and doctoral training and remains the only such
research centre in the south of the country. It is important to recog-
nise however, that the trajectory of the development of criminology in
Ireland was not uniform. In 2005 O’Donnell pointed out that crimi-
nology in Northern Ireland has long had a presence with the Institute of
Criminology and Criminal Justice in existence since 1995 and a number
1 This appears to be inaccurate, but the numbers contributing to the journal are still
low. In 2005 Ian O’Donnell submitted Crime and justice in the Republic of Ireland.
European Journal of Criminology, 2(1), 99–131 and in the same year Aodhan Mulcahy
published The other lessons from Ireland, 29(2), 195–209 and in 2007 Barry Vaughan
and Shane Kilcommins published The Europeanization of human rights: An obstacle to
Authoritarian policing in Ireland? 4(4), 437–460. Of course, author based in Northern
Ireland drawing on data from that region would have been categorised as British in this
data analysis.
4 O. LYNCH ET AL.
of academic programmes being offered in both Queens University and

the University of Ulster. However, Northern Ireland was still somewhat
trailing criminology in Great Britain. Maruna and McEvoy (2015) point
out that when Ken Pease was commissioned to review the criminolog-
ical landscape of the region in 1992, he called it ‘quite bleak’ (p. 593),
however, not as bleak as the Republic of Ireland. The impact of the Trou-
bles was of course highly relevant for the emergence of criminology and
the way in which criminal justice research developed in Northern Ireland,
but this too was the case in the South— albeit somewhat less obvious,
or at least less recognised. The fact that the 1988 Victimological survey
of Northern Ireland stated the province had the lowest rate of victimi-
sation of all European countries surveyed tells you something about the
state of criminological research in the region. In the south, the impact of
civil unrest on crime and punishment was largely overlooked. Brewer et al.
(1997b) point out that in McCullough’s 1996 book on Crime in Ireland,
one of the key foundational texts for Irish criminology, the North and
the Troubles are hardly mentioned. In spite of both these issues, Maruna
and McEvoy (2015) have jubilantly declared that things have now utterly
changed ( p. 593) for the better.
Since 2000, there has been a significant growth in criminology
modules and programmes in both Northern Ireland and the republic.
In 2015 Hamilton, Healy et al. pointed out that globally, criminology
was booming and Ireland was slowly increasing its programme offerings.
At the time, the authors counted over thirty programmes with crimino-
logical components, today that has increased to 18 programmes at level
8 QQI2 and above primarily focused on criminology (see appendix one)
and 36 programmes with a criminology component at level 8 and above.
In the Institutes of Technology (IRE) and Further Education Colleges
(NI) there are approximately 20 programmes with a criminology compo-
nent (level 7 or lower). These courses do not take into account the
programmes (level 7 or lower, special purpose or CDP programmes)
on offer by private, independent and not-for-profit colleges, nor do
they account for adult or continuing education programmes on offer
by Universities, nor Open University options. It is difficult to quantify
the number of graduates, but based on average figures provided by the
institutions themselves both North and South, there are between 900
2 see https://www.qqi.ie/.
and 1000 students who enrol each year on criminology and criminology
related (level 8 and above) programmes (see appendix one for details).
While this progress represents a very positive development for the
discipline of criminology, it does present the field with a dilemma; the
need to balance the needs of an ever increasing student population with
the limited research funding that is available and the limited opportunities
that exist within academic to pursue research and teaching careers. In this
volume O’Donnell (chapter two) points out that the burden of managing
ever increasing numbers of programmes and students may well serve to
stifle the opportunities for researchers to progress knowledge and critique
of and in the field.
Situating Irish Criminology

More in step with our European colleagues (as opposed to our Amer-
ican colleagues), criminology emerged in Ireland from a rich variety of
disciplines and concerns; politics, sociology, history, psychology, human
rights and philosophy. But importantly, Irish criminology is also about
the practitioners, institutions and social practices that define this small
and bounded field. This however is an issue discussed at length in this
volume and one that sharply divides the discipline, both due to the highly
contested issue of academic involvement in and with institutions of the
state but also due to the politicisation of criminological output for the
purpose of political legitimacy. On the other hand, and as witnessed in the
contribution of Irish criminologists to various state institutions, having a
voice is seen as vital, and many academics see their role as public intellec-
tuals and their duty to bring evidence and best practice to the institutions
and practitioners, both state and non-state, who are involved in criminal
justice on the island.
If we were to crudely define Irish criminology, its reliance on critical
theory, qualitative methods and social theory are perhaps the most highly
featured characteristics. Due in no small part to the absence of data, but
also due to the etiological origins of social science in Ireland more gener-
ally (O’Donnell et al. 2008), this unique landscape here has moulded
criminology in a particular fashion. Forms of imprisonment, the treat-
ment of women, the role of the church in social censure, the Troubles and
preceding periods of political violence and the dual system of administra-
tion on the island have all contributed to how we think about and write
about criminology. In addition, issues of data management, data sharing
6 O. LYNCH ET AL.
and research funding have all had an impact on how we do criminolog-

ical research in Ireland. However, despite political and ideological vagaries
of the dual criminal justice system on the island of Ireland, the insti-
tutions and the instruments do not define this emerging academic field
(Mulcahy 2005). There is a rich tradition of diversity of academic thought
on the Island and this has emerged in the Irish criminological litera-
ture. Nowhere has this played out more than in the debates around the
need for an official criminology and warnings against mirroring the crimi-
nology of the UK and the USA. Related to these warnings is the question
of any relationship between criminology and practice; academic involve-
ment in the doing of criminal justice is hotly contested. The diversity of
ideas and positions on the island that range from abolitionist to positivist
and Foucauldian to agentic theories, as might be expected, do not lend
themselves to a coherent criminology, but these frameworks ensure Irish
criminology is neither reactionary, simplistic, nor self-justifying (Smith
2013).
However engagement with the institutions of the state, an activity that
is seen by some as a duty in their role as criminologists and by others as
a betrayal, does not necessarily mean the emergence of an official crim-
inology. As demonstrated in the case of Scotland, a critical tradition can
and has emerged within the state apparatus. For example according to
McAra (2008) the Central Research Unit (CRU) created groundbreaking
work in its own right, supported critical scholars, and enabled early career
academics to access, critique and analyse data. This debate will no doubt
continue and develop in Ireland as calls for funding and the long term
support of criminological research heightens.
An Irish Criminology?
When we ask if there is a distinctly Irish criminology, we should perhaps
first ask is there a distinctly Irish system of and interpretation of justice.
Going back to the nineteenth century, of course many elements of the
Irish system of justice were in line with the English approach, but there
has always been something distinctly Irish in the approach (Howlin
2013). This was in part due to perceptions of the savagery of the popu-
lation and the ongoing and persistent political unrest in the jurisdiction
(ibid.). Researchers point out that despite the role of the British in the
development of the Irish Criminal Justice system, Ireland’s position as one
of influence on British systems of Criminal Justice is sometimes unseen.
Whether this relates to the early emergence of a centralised police force,
the pioneering use of permanent paid magistrates or centralised public

prosecutions process there was a distinctly Irish flavour to the emerging
system of justice on the Island defined by centralisation and profession-
alisation (ibid.). More important perhaps than asking if there is an Irish
criminology is to focus on what criminology from Ireland can offer to
a wider audience. What lessons have we learnt, how have our influences
played out and what can we offer to our academic neighbours in this field.
Perhaps we might offer the lessons on policing in a state emerging from
a post-colonial environment (Conway 2013), how rejection of centralised
criminal justice systems was an active of anti-colonial resistance or how
civil war and conflict impacted the institutions of the state, particularly
around justice and policing (Brewer et al. 1997b). Of course we can talk
about how state power was operationalised and controlled and how this
impacted upon what was and was not deemed criminality, but also how
parallel systems of control emerged, thereby saving the state from having
to engage in those spaces (O’Mahony 1993). Importantly we can talk
about how the Troubles and the dual system of administration impacted
on criminology and criminal justice research on the island. The Irish and
Northern Irish criminal justice system emerged as a result of the social
conditions unique to Ireland and responses to that system, and broader
social circumstances are of course a reaction to this uniqueness and these
are the lessons we can export.
We know of course that while we have exported our ideas and our
experiences, we have also exported our people; a significant number of
Irish criminology graduates go onto careers in UK institutions. In addi-
tion, practitioners have long been exported from the island. Expatriates
who were former Royal Irish Constabulary police officers joined the ranks
of police forces around the world and took up positions as civil servants,
magistrates etc. in their new homes. Today, there remains significant
Irish influence in international criminal justice (and related) organisations.
For example Former Garda Commissioner Noirin O Sullivan served as
Director of Strategic Partnerships for Europe at the International Associ-
ation of Chiefs of Police and is currently UN assistant secretary general
for the department of safety and security. Chief Supt Stephen Fanning,
retired, was the first UN police commissioner and the architect of UN
policing policy (Cusack 1996), hundreds of former Royal Ulster Constab-
ulary took up positions in Iraq and Afghanistan (Clarke 2006). Gerry
NcNally, the deputy director of the probation service is President of the
Confederation of European Probation, Caron McCaffrey the Director
8 O. LYNCH ET AL.
General of the Irish Prison Service is a board member of Europris. Inter-

estingly the Seychelles has a significant ex-Garda population. Garda chief
superintendent (retd) Michael Fitzgerald became deputy commissioner
of the police force, while Garda chief superintendent (retd) Liam Quinn
became director of operations and training, Liam Coen, a former chief
superintendent, was appointed to the crime wing of the country’s police
force and Liam Hogan, another chief superintendent, became director of
the Financial Investigation Unit. There are also Irish people in promi-
nent positions in the Seychelles customs department and they have been
instrumental in setting up a type of Criminal Assets Bureau on the islands
(Clarke 2010).

The rise and rise of criminology in Ireland cannot be understood by
focusing only on the traditional disciplinary boundaries of the field. As
Prof. Maruna points out in this volume we are all academic magpies and
criminology is our rendezvous discipline; it is this eclecticism that gives
Irish criminology its uniqueness. Most importantly, and a belief that is
shared by all the participants in this book is that criminology in Ireland
is what it is and where it is because of the people; the researchers, the
teachers, the service users, the practitioners and the students. In this
volume we trace the lineage of some of Ireland’s criminologists, magpies
and purists alike, from their undergraduate studies to their appointment
as Chairs and Professors, we document their influences and their part-
nerships, their innovations and their ideologies. Through understanding
where the contributors are coming from we understand better how and
why they are where they are.
In the ten conversations that follow we explore the experiences of a
selection of individuals who make up the diverse criminology community
on the Island of Ireland. We chose individuals from different disciplines,
different academic traditions and eras and we included individuals from
most of the universities in both the republic and Northern Ireland.
The conversations in this book speak to both the diversity of Irish
criminology but also speak to the idea discussed by Healy and Hamilton
et al. (2015) of a unified criminology. In short—criminology in Ireland
is best described as a community of researchers, practitioners, students
and service users, informed by different traditions, ideologies, disciplines
and approaches. This community is sustained by a highly valued annual
all island conference, but not yet supported by a society, nor a dedi-
cated journal. The development of more stable structures that will outlive
the motivation of individual contributors and organisers is only a matter
of time and given the phenomenal interest in criminology, and hope-
fully in years to come, a significant increase in the researcher population,
criminology in Ireland will no doubt develop and change for the better.
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University Press: Cork.
Mulcahy, A. (2005). The other lessons from Ireland? Policing, political violence
and policy transfer. European Journal of Criminology, 2(2), 185–209.
O’Donnell, I., Baumer, E. P., & Hughes, N. (2008). Recidivism in the Republic
of Ireland. Criminology and Criminal Justice, 8, 123–146.
O’Donnell, I. (1997). Crime, punishment and poverty. Criminal Law Journal,
2, 1340151.
O’Donnell, I. (2005). Crime and justice in the Republic of Ireland. European
Journal of Criminology, 2(1), 99–131.
O’Mahony, P. (1993). Crime and punishment in Ireland. Dublin: Round Hall.
Smith, D. J. (2013). Wider and deeper: The future of criminology in Europe.
European Journal of Criminology, 11(1), 3–22.
Vaughan, B., & Kilcommins, S. (2007). The Europeanisation of human rights:
An obstacle to authoritarian policing in Ireland? European Journal of Crimi-
nology, 4(4), 437–460.
CHAPTER 2
In Conversation with Prof. Ian O’Donnell
Abstract In this chapter Prof. Ian O’Donnell speaks about his research
journey. His story starts with a role working on the issue of suicides in the
London underground system, followed by a position that involved exam-
ining the issue of armed robbery and later his involvement in research
focused on developing a drug testing regime in British Prisons. The
unifying features of these projects are the focus on decision making
processes and environmental design, and in this chapter Prof. O’Donnell
explains how these theoretical approaches alongside the data collection
processes have informed his work. Prof. O’Donnell speaks about his more
recent work on isolation in prisons, and mirroring the sentiment of other
contributors to this volume, acknowledges the need to ensure that the
multiple audiences for criminological writing are served. In particular he
speaks about the popularity of his book on isolation among the popula-
tion of prison inmates and how this impacted on their own experience of
and understanding of solitary confinement.
Keywords Psychology · Institute · Cambridge · Imprisonment ·

Coercive
In tracing the origins and evolution of the discipline of criminology in

Ireland, the indisputable elder (in experience not age!) must be Prof. Ian

Switzerland AG 2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60593-3_2
12 O. LYNCH ET AL.
O’Donnell. Occupying the first named criminology post in the country,

Prof. O’Donnell has long been a part of both criminal justice organi-
sations and academic criminology in Ireland. Prof. O’Donnell’s work on
prison, probation and the history of violence has filled a significant void in
our knowledge of penology in Ireland, and his pioneering data collection
and analysis has changed the way we think about imprisonment interna-
tionally. His focus on coercive confinement has impacted both the story of
penology in Ireland but also how we understand our own history of coer-
cive control, the treatment of women, and the role of the criminal justice
and parallel systems on the island. Through his work on parallel systems
on confinement, Prof. O’Donnell has revealed that unlike official incar-
ceration rates, states have in fact become less punitive rather than more.
Importantly, this empirical work serves to augment existing theories on
the cultures of control (Garland 2001; O’Donnell 2004). The exposition
of extra-judicial control practices and Prof. O’Donnell’s general philos-
ophy of greater attention to the past served in this case to bring new
information and analysis to the study of penology informed of course by
Foucault’s (1977) work on the carceral archipelago.
Criminological work often brings the researcher in and out of academia
often via practice work in prisons, law offices, NGOs, police stations and
schools. The experience of Prof. Ian O’Donnell is no different and his
research journey is marked by his time working on the issue of suicides in
the London underground system, examining instances of armed robbery
in partnership with the flying squad in the Metropolitan Police and eval-
uating a drug testing regime in British Prisons. While these may seem
like diverse research undertakings, the unifying features of these projects
is an interest in the decision-making processes and environmental design
that impact on the behaviours in question; in this chapter Prof. O’Don-
nell explains how these theoretical approaches have informed his work.
He also speaks about his more recent work on isolation in prisons and
mirroring the sentiment of other contributors to this volume, acknowl-
edges the need to ensure that the multiple audiences for criminological
writing are served. In particular, he speaks about the popularity of his own
book on isolation (solitary confinement) among prison inmates and how
access to this volume impacted on their experience of and understanding
of solitary confinement.
2 IN CONVERSATION WITH PROF. IAN O’DONNELL 13
Bio
Prof. O’Donnell was appointed as Professor of Criminology in the School
of Law at University College Dublin (UCD) in 2006. Between 2004 and
2010 he was Director of the UCD Institute of Criminology. Prior to
joining UCD in 2000 Prof. O’Donnell was Director of the Irish Penal
Reform Trust (1997–2000), Research Officer at the Oxford University
Centre for Criminological Research (1992–1997), and Research Assistant
at the University of London (1989–1992). Previously he was involved
with HMP Pentonville as a member of the Board of visitors and sat
as a Magistrate on the Oxford bench. Prof. O’Donnell is a Chartered
Psychologist and Fellow of the British Psychological Society; a Fellow of
the Royal Historical Society; a Member of the Academia Europaea; an
Adjunct Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford and a Member of the Royal
Irish Academy. His most recent books are entitled Justice, Mercy, and
Caprice: Clemency and the Death Penalty in Ireland (2017) and Prisoners,
Solitude, and Time (2014).
Recommended Readings
O’Donnell, I. (2017). Justice, mercy, and caprice: Clemency and the death
penalty in Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
O’Sullivan, E., & O’Donnell, I. (Eds.). (2012). Coercive confinement
in Ireland: Patients, prisoners and penitents. Manchester: Manchester
University Press.
Pathway to Criminology
I studied psychology at Trinity College Dublin for four years and when
I was coming to the end of that I wanted to do a post-grad, I didn’t
want to stay in Ireland, it was coming to the end of ’88 so there was
a lot of outward movement of people then. I think everybody in my
graduation class emigrated. I applied for a Masters in Social Psychology
in the London School of Economics and a Masters in Criminology in
Cambridge, and when the offers came through I opted for the Masters in
Criminology in Cambridge, then I did my PhD in London on a part-time
basis. Around that time I saw a job advertised in the Guardian for some-
body to do a study on suicide prevention in the London Underground
Railway System. I applied for that job and got it. About two-thirds of the
14 O. LYNCH ET AL.
way through my PhD I saw another ad in the paper for a research officer
in the criminology department in Oxford looking at armed robbery in
London. I was nearly finished the PhD at that point and my Head of
Department strongly encouraged me and I went for it and I got it. I
started working in Oxford on a study on the decision-making of armed
robbers which involved working closely with the Flying Squad in London;
it involved interviewing everybody who was involved with armed robbery
events in a particular year. Then when that project came to an end I got
some money to do a study of violence in prisons with a colleague called
Dr Kimmett Edgar who I recruited and we worked together a lot over
the years. I also got some money to do a study of a mandatory drug
testing programme that was introduced into the prisons over there (UK)
so I went from doing a Masters in Cambridge to working in London on
an unrelated project, but with some criminological principles underpin-
ning it, to working again in Oxford, to doing some [practice] criminology
again. At that time, the post of Director of the Irish Penal Reform Trust
came up and I applied for that and I got it. I worked there for about three
years and then moved to UCD where the Institute of Criminology was
set up and I have been working here (UCD) for the last nineteen years.
Key Influences
The work that I found influential at the start [of my career] was in the
tradition of crime prevention that Ron Clarke (1995) and others did; that
loomed pretty large when I was trying to make sense of people attempting
to take their lives on the London Underground. When I went to Oxford
the rational choice perspective on crime was part of my work too in
terms of analysing the decision-making practices of armed robbers. For
the last number of years my work has been more focused on sentencing
and penology and there is a huge amount of literature in the USA in
particular, but also in the UK, that I draw on in that work. I also have
an interest in Criminal Justice history, so I have been impressed by the
kind of work that has been done in the middle and in the latter half of
the nineteenth century by Crofton (Hinde, 1977) and others into prison
regimes and early release and all the rest of it, so I found it helpful to look
back to draw information on how we might address issues in the present.
Clarke, R. V. (1995). Building a safer society: Strategic approaches to
crime prevention. Crime and Justice, 19, 91–150.
Hinde, R. S. E. (1977). Sir Walter Crofton and the reform of the Irish
convict system, 1854–61—II. Irish Jurist, 12(2), 295–338.
Situating Your Research

At the moment my research is largely focused around penology and
imprisonment with a strand of work in criminal justice history, such as
the history of violence. I have written an account of violence since the
[Irish] famine— from the 1840s up to the present—to try chart the
trends and then to try and explain that. I have an interest in violence as it
manifests historically, I have an interest in all the practical problems asso-
ciated with prisons and how they are run and how people organise their
lives within them. I do this with an eye on particular aspects of society
that might be unique to an Irish context. So my research is about the
contemporary problems around imprisonment, how they’re addressed,
the history of crime and punishment with a focus on violent crime in
particular and sentencing practice.
Key Publications
Eoin O’Sullivan and myself wrote an article for the journal Punishment
and Society in 2007 and it was an attempt to think more deeply about
the emergence of a culture of control where the measure of control was
usually the amount of prisoners per 100,000 of the national population.
We decided to cast the net more widely and instead of looking at prison
as a proxy for how punitive or controlling a society is, we looked at
everyone who was involuntarily contained - so the people held in psychi-
atric hospitals against their will, in reformatories and industrial schools, in
Magdalene asylums and all the rest of it. When we put all of this together
we discovered that the rate of coercive confinement in Ireland in the
1950s was over 1000 per 100,000 of population; the rate of imprison-
ment in the USA today is about 750 per 100,000 population and that’s
a cause of huge concern, but it’s much, much lower than the population
coercively confined in the 1950s in Ireland. The other element of this
16 O. LYNCH ET AL.
story is that the 1950s was a time of huge outward movement of people
so the country was haemorrhaging its people and we were still confining
more than 1% of it. So when we sent this article into the journal, initially
we got very good feedback about the value of this framework for looking
at the area of social control as it made a lot of sense. However, some of the
commentators who got back to us said maybe this is peculiar to the Irish
context and one of the reasons we worked the article up to a book was to
say well look, this isn’t peculiar to the Irish context because the institu-
tions we are talking about were found everywhere, certainly throughout
the common law world. So Ireland certainly wasn’t the only country to
detain people in psychiatric hospitals, it wasn’t the only country that had
Magdalene asylums, it wasn’t the only place where young people were
held in Industrial or Reformatory schools. So our argument in the book
is that these institutions existed in lots of places, and it would be worth-
while examining the patterns of use because what’s peculiar about Ireland
is the rate that we used psychiatric hospitals, we use them more than any
place in the world.
So in the volume on Coercive Confinement in Ireland: Patients, Pris-
oners and Penitents we presented a challenge to people working in other
jurisdictions, and that was to think of coercive confinement rather than
just imprisonment, to try to assemble data from all of these different
sources and see what the trends look like. If we look at Ireland and we
look at the prison, the trend over the last 150 years has been upwards
but if we think of coercive confinement the trend has been steeply down-
wards, so we wanted to issue that challenge to other scholars in other
jurisdictions to do the same analysis and see what emerged. We also
wanted to introduce some balance to the debate by presenting contempo-
rary sources. So there is a lot written today about what these institutions
were like but there isn’t a great awareness of what information was avail-
able at the time, what had been written at the time, so in the first fifty
years post-independence, what would a citizen have known about these
institutions? Was there anything out there in the public domain, maybe
written by people who had been in the institutions, or visited them, or
who had some responsibility for them? We wanted to identify that material
which is difficult to find, and bring it together in one place. The other
thing we wanted to do in this book was to challenge this notion that
these institutions or the problem of coercive confinement can be put at
the door of the state or religious orders and we wanted to say look there
is a missing part of the story here which is the family. Some of these insti-
tutions in Ireland were run by religious orders and congregations, and
sometimes people were sent into these institutions via the courts, but a
referral route in lots of cases was the family. So the reasons for writing the
book were to build on the article from 2007, to put a challenge out there
to other scholars to say, what were the patterns like in other countries,
and to re-balance the debate by introducing the family into the context
so it becomes about the church and the state and the family.
Linked to this, in some of my other work I was curious about what
did a sentence of say three or four years feel like to a man in the 1830s or
1840s whose life expectancy might be 45 years, compared to what does a
prison sentence of the same duration feel like to a man in 2020 whose life
expectancy is nearly twice as long. I was thinking about how prisoners deal
with the temporal dimension of their lives, how they manage time. When
I started looking into the history of prison I became very interested in
the different models—the separate system versus silent system—and how
the passage of time felt to a prisoner who was alone in a cell all day with
nothing but the Bible and the reformative influence of the Chaplaincy,
compared to a prisoner who was working in congregation with other
prisoners but under a rule of strictly enforced silence. As I was thinking
about the history of the prison and the different penal regimes that were
popular at the time, and the philosophies that underpin them, I started
thinking about how would it feel to be a prisoner today in very strict soli-
tary confinement where the authorities have given up any prospect that
the experience is going to be a reformative one. A prisoner in the 1830s
and 40s and 50s was held apart from other prisoners because there was
a belief that this was a way of triggering a process of reform that would
mean that when they left prison they were less likely to commit further
crime and end up back in prison, but today that reformative rationale is
gone. If somebody is in a supermax prison in the USA, the degree of isola-
tion they experience is probably more total than the degree experienced
by a prisoner in the 1840s
I was curious to know how it feels to be isolated against your will for
a long period of time and has that changed. And then I was concerned
to see is there anything we can learn from people who experience isola-
tion of their own volition that might be used to shed some light on the
prisoner experience. There were some historical dimensions to the work
and there were temporary resonances and I was trying to bring together
different literatures about how people spend time, how they deal with
18 O. LYNCH ET AL.
boredom and what strategies they come up with to make that burden a
little bit more manageable. I began corresponding with some prisoners
who had been in isolation for a long time, and I visited the USA and
other places where prisoners had been isolated for a long time and came
up with a couple of very simple questions that I asked prisoners, or if I
had colleagues that were working in prisons, they would survey the pris-
oners, but basically it was a simple question something like ‘based on your
own experience if you had a single piece of advice to give to a prisoner about
to embark on a life sentence what would that advice be?’
So I drew some information from that data collection exercise and
then I spent a long time reviewing autobiographical works by prisoners,
and there are many of them out there from the middle of the nineteenth
century to the present and the idea was to see what can we learn from
what prisoners tell us about enforced isolation over a long period of time;
so that’s how the book came to be the book that it is.
O’Donnell, I. (2014). Prisoners, solitude, and time. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
O’Sullivan, E., & O’Donnell, I. (2007). Coercive confinement in the
Republic of Ireland: The waning of a culture of control. Punishment &
Society, 9(1), 27–48.
O’Donnell, I., & O’Sullivan, E. (2020). Coercive confinement: An idea
whose time has come? Incarceration, 1(1).
Most Influential Work

If I was to pick one publication from the last few years that had some
influence on policy and practice it would be the ‘Prisoners, Solitude and
Time’ book which was used in the High Court case of a man who was
fighting extradition to the USA on the grounds that if he was extradited
he would be held in Administrative Segregation (solitary confinement)
and this would be a violation of his human rights. The judge in that
case relied on the argument in the book and I was an expert witness in
the case. The argument I make in the book was that in solitary confine-
ment some people cope remarkably well, but it has adverse implications
for most. Some remarkable people can cope, but most people are harmed
by it and if they have a pre-existing mental health problem the damage

can be really catastrophic, also if they are young and their brain isn’t fully
formed, the neurological damage can be severe. So that book had an
impact in terms of affecting the outcome of that case because the extra-
dition request was denied. The book was launched in Mountjoy prison
so we had an event there and The Irish Times did a video feature on it,
and the Director General of the Irish Prison Service, Michael Donnellan,
asked me would I come and speak to his Elimination of Solitary Confine-
ment working group. I thought it was great that the group aimed for
the ‘Elimination’ of Solitary Confinement, not the ‘reduction’, or ‘reme-
diation’ or ‘progress towards the elimination of solitary confinement’. I
spoke to that group and after that he asked me to address the governors
and various heads of function at the Irish Prison Service.
At that meeting I issued a challenge, namely for the Irish Prison Service
to come into compliance with the Nelson Mandela Rules (2015), specifi-
cally the rule that deals with solitary confinement, which aims to prohibit
solitary confinement of more than 15 days. We are a small rich country
with a modest prison population and we should be able to meet these
standards relatively easily. Ultimately the prison rules were changed subse-
quent to that to allow prisoners more out of cell time, and to ensure that
out of cell time involved meaningful human engagement. When the book
was published I wrote a short article for The Psychologist, which is an in-
house publication of the British Psychological Society. I also was asked by
the editor of a magazine that goes to every prisoner on death row called
‘The Wing of Friendship’—Lifelines is the name of that organisation—
if it would be ok to reprint the piece from the Psychologist. It was only
three or four pages but every prisoner on death row was then able to read
it.
O’Donnell, I. (2016). The survival secrets of solitaries. The Psychologist,
29, 184–187. Available online at https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/
volume-29/march-2016/survival-secrets-solitaries.
One problem with academic books is they cost a lot and they are often
only available in hardback. I approached Oxford University Press who
published Prisoners Solitude and time and they gave me a discounted rate
on a book order and the School of Law here in UCD paid for them, so
20 O. LYNCH ET AL.
I was able to put a copy in every prison library in Ireland, in the Prison
Service Training College in Prison Headquarters in Longford—just to
make sure that if there was a prisoner who was finding the experience of
isolation overwhelming at least there would be some resource that they
could draw on if they were literate and felt that they wanted to do it. I
know from a couple of the prison chaplains that they have been working
through some elements of the book with some of the prisoners, so I think
that it has had some kind of impact in that regard too.
When I finished the book on solitary confinement, I turned my atten-
tion to a study of people who had been sentenced to death in Ireland in
the post-independence period; that is everyone who had been sentenced
to death from 1923 onwards and what I was really interested in was that
1 in 3 were executed meaning 2 in 3 were not. I knew this because the
Department of Justice made the closed prisoner files available to me.
Subsequently I examined all of the relevant records I could find in the
National Archives, and files that were at the Taoiseach’s Department that
I was able to access on site there. But what I was really keen to work
out was of the two-thirds of people who were not executed, were there
reasons for that? How can we understand why one particular person was
hanged or shot while another was spared? And then what happened after-
wards? I spent a number of years going through the files to try and figure
out what was the decision-making process behind it? If there was a convic-
tion for murder and the death penalty was mandatory did the jury attach
a rider asking the government to be merciful and did that have any effect?
At the time judges had an opportunity to send a letter to government, to
give their view and I read all those letters and I wanted to see what was
the impact of a jury making a recommendation for mercy and a judge
endorsing that. And then if the person was spared how long did they
spend in custody, where did they go afterwards?
At that time men who were sentenced to death for murder and whose
conviction was commuted to penal servitude for life only served about
seven or so years in custody. Men who are sentenced to life imprison-
ment for murder today spend more than twenty years in custody so there
is an interesting question there to be addressed. The women who were
sentenced to death, in all but one case were commuted to penal servi-
tude for life, and didn’t spend as long as the men in prison. They were
transferred to another institution, often to a religious run institution, and
they could spend extensive periods of time there. I looked at the decision
making behind the clemency process—what factors did the government
weigh up when it was deciding if the law should take its course? Should
the president be advised to commute the sentence and how long did they
spend in prison? And what happened to them post release? The project
gave a fascinating insight into what were the priorities of judges and juries
and how they overlapped with the government of the day when they were
trying to decide a case.
O’Donnell, I. (2017). Justice, mercy, and caprice: Clemency and the death
penalty in Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Current Work
At the moment I am working on a study of how prisoner societies
organise themselves in different jurisdictions and I was very lucky a couple
of years ago that I was asked by a Spiritan Priest, Paddy Moran, to spend
some time in Ethiopia where he had been working for many years and
where the commander of the prison was a very open minded reformist
individual. Paddy Moran wanted to know if there were any suggestions
I might be able to make based on my experience in other parts of the
world that the commander might be encouraged to think about. So I
spent some time out there and I was really struck by how harmonious
an institution it was despite the fact—or maybe because of the fact—that
there were very few staff; there were about 2200 prisoners and about
35 staff on duty at any one time. The prisoners were in a compound
on their own and they organised their own lives, they were almost all
working. Importantly the prisoners had an imperative to work because
if they had a family outside and they couldn’t provide for them starva-
tion was a possibility because Ethiopia is a terribly poor country. So the
prisoners are all working, and the bank came to the prison about twice a
week and the prisoners lodged their cash. I was particularly interested in
the code of conduct that the prisoners had drawn up for themselves. They
had their own constitution, that they put together after consultation and
in collaboration with the prison authorities, and it is really a rule book for
their daily lives that covers everything from personal hygiene to escape
attempts. There were aspects of how the prison was organised that really
fascinated me, here you had a lot of prisoners in a country that is very
22 O. LYNCH ET AL.
materially deprived but who are organising their lives in a really sophis-
ticated way, so I was fascinated by that and I am going to extend that
study into looking at other kinds of prison societies in other jurisdictions,
so that’s what I will be working on for the next little while.
O’Donnell, I. (2019). The society of captives in an Ethiopian prison. The
Prison Journal, 99(3), 267–284.
Irish Criminology
I think it’s great in Ireland to see the number of people who are working
in criminology. I suppose 25 or 30 years ago when I started working in
this area it was possible to keep on top of everything because there was so
little happening, there were very few criminology programmes available.
There was no Institute of Criminology, like we have here in UCD, there
were very few people working full time, probably no one working full
time in the area, but a small number of people who were doing very good
work. There was a small interest in the area but recently we have had an
explosion in interest, so I think that is a really positive development.
I think what seems to be happening in Ireland at the moment is there is
a lot of growth but it is at the level of university courses, there is research
going on of course there is, but I think there is a lot of remedial work
to be done. We know very little about how prison societies in Ireland are
organised, there has been very little in-depth work. We know very little
about sentencing so there is a need for big quantitative study of crime
trends and of sentencing practice. We did a big study on recidivism in
UCD in 2008, maybe it’s time to go back to that again. We need to
do these big quantitative studies and I think that these studies are so
important because people have so little confidence in the official data.
The Garda figures have very little credibility and it is so important for
researchers to do what they can to create a context where we are working
with data that we trust because it is reliable and valid. I think there is a
need still for a lot of remedial work and I think it is an area of criminology
and criminal justice where there is scope for fascinating research, looking
at Ireland as a sort of a case study, to see where developments that have
taken place in other countries might have different outcomes if they were
tried here and not to slavishly copy or import legislation policies from
other countries, which is what we have tended to do, to think in a really

critical way about what kind of approaches might work best here. Maybe
exporting some good ideas from here to other contexts but I think the
way the tradition is developing is toward undergraduate education which
I hope isn’t at the cost of doing this kind of fundamental research because
although the discipline has grown there still aren’t that many people that
are working in it, maybe a small handful in each of the universities, and if
their energy is to be put into teaching, particularly at the undergraduate
level I think that might have the consequence of impeding the progress
on the research front that is still needed.
O’Donnell, I. (2011). Criminology, bureaucracy and unfinished business.
In M. Bosworth & C. Hoyle (Eds.), What is criminology? Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
O’Donnell. I., Baumer, E. P., & Hughes, N. (2008). Recidivism in the
Republic of Ireland. Criminology and Criminal Justice, 8(2), 123–146.
Barriers to Research
In Ireland, it’s not that it is difficult to get hold of the data, I think it is
just what confidence can we place in the data. So, for example, the Central
Statistics Office (CSO) has a lot on recorded crime but because we don’t
really know a lot about crimes that are reported but not recorded, and
because there are so many flaws with the recorded data, it is really not
access to the material that is problematic, it is the quality of the material
that we are given access to. On the prison side of things and in terms
of probation there has been a real improvement in terms of access and
I think that has to do with a kind of opening up of those agencies and
forward thinking on behalf of their directors and that’s been terrific. So I
wouldn’t say it is so much a difficulty getting access to information, even
on the historical research that I have done, the Department of Justice has
been open to making certain files available, with certain caveats of course.
It is not so much access to information, it’s creating an awareness within
funding bodies that important work takes time, and it costs money. So if
there is a question about whether a particular programme [intervention]
works, to take a criminal justice example, well it’s not going to be enough
to give a bursary to a Masters student to look at that or even a PhD
24 O. LYNCH ET AL.
student. The Department of Justice is going to have to think along the

lines of multi-annual funding on a significant scale so that we can initiate
the kind of research programmes that we can stand over then for quite a
while.
But overall, one of the strengths of Criminology in Ireland is the fact
that there is so much work to be done and that there is no shortage of
areas of criminology to look into. I think it is a strength that people don’t
become over specialised like they do other jurisdictions where the field is
more advanced. I think that’s a real strength. Another strength is that
we can have an annual meeting and that nearly everyone can go to it
and that’s a significant strength too. So there are lots of positive things
going on. The weakness I think is the wider funding environment and
the difficulty of obtaining enough to do the big research projects.
And probably one of the other weaknesses that is going to become
more apparent over the years is a lack of good quality meaningful employ-
ment opportunities for people who have maybe done an undergraduate
degree in criminology and a post-grad in criminology, and where does
that lead to in terms of their career development? There are lots of people
doing PhDs in all the universities, but there are very few opportunities for
them in terms of lectureships and other appointments. While it’s fantastic
that the discipline is growing this means that a lot of people are gradu-
ating without any obvious career path in front of them. But importantly,
I’d like to see criminology develop not just as a subject that people take at
undergraduate and graduate level, but as a field of research so that we can
create a space to be ambitious in terms of the kind of research projects we
take on and making sure that we bring them to a successful conclusion.
References
Clarke, R. V. (1995). Building a safer society: Strategic approaches to crime
prevention. Crime and Justice, 19, 91–150.
Clarke, R. V. G. (Ed.). (1997). Situational crime prevention (pp. 225–256).
Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press.
Farmer, R., O’Donnell, I., & Tranah, T. (1991). Suicide on the London
underground system. International Journal of Epidemiology, 20(3), 707–711.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan,
Trans.).
Garland, D. (2001). Cultures of control. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hinde, R. S. E. (1977). Sir Walter Crofton and the reform of the Irish convict
system, 1854–61—II. Irish Jurist, 12(2), 295–338.
O’Donnell, I. (2004). Imprisonment and penal policy in Ireland. Howard

Journal of Criminal Justice, 43(3), 253–266.
O’Donnell, I. (2011). Criminology, bureaucracy and unfinished business. In M.
Bosworth & C. Hoyle (Eds.), What is criminology? Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
O’Donnell, I. (2014). Prisoners, solitude, and time. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
O’Donnell, I. (2016). The survival secrets of solitaries. The Psychologist, 29,
184–187. Available online at https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-
29/march-2016/survival-secrets-solitaries.
O’Donnell, I. (2017a). Justice, mercy, and caprice: Clemency and the death penalty
in Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
O’Donnell, I. (2017b). Ireland’s shrinking prison population. Irish Criminal
Law Review, 27 (93), 70–77.
O’Donnell, I. (2019). The society of captives in an Ethiopian prison. The Prison
Journal, 99(3), 267–284.
O’Donnell, I., Baumer, E. P., & Highes, N. (2008). Recidivism in the Republic
of Ireland. Criminology and Criminal Justice, 8(2), 123–146.
O’Donnell, I., & O’Sullivan, E. (2020). Coercive confinement: An idea whose
time has come? Incarceration, 1(1).
O’Sullivan, E., & O’Donnell, I. (2007). Coercive confinement in the Republic
of Ireland: The waning of a culture of control. Punishment & Society, 9(1),
27–48.
O’Sullivan, E., & O’Donnell, I. (Eds.). (2012). Coercive confinement in Ireland:
Patients, prisoners and penitents (p. 250). Manchester: Manchester University
Press.
UNODC. (2015). United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the treatment
of prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules) 1. Available online at https://www.
unodc.org/documents/justice-and-prison-reform/Nelson_Mandela_Rules-E-
ebook.pdf.
CHAPTER 3
A Conversation with Dr Deirdre Healy
Abstract Seeking the relief of significant social issues is a theme that runs
across the chapters in this volume, and in this chapter Dr Deirdre Healy
emphasises how her own interest in Criminology was led by a desire to
see the application of academic knowledge to prison and probation issues.
Seeking a solution led approach, influenced by both forensic psychology
and criminology, Dr Healy prioritises the voices of individuals with direct
experience of the criminal justice system. Theoretical concepts that inform
Dr Healy’s work such as recidivism, dehumanisation, othering and social
identity are also discussed in this chapter. She traces her academic journey
from its psychological origins and documents the influence of key authors
on her work. In this chapter she also speaks about new methods in
researching criminology and how innovative qualitative methods serve the
discipline.
Keywords Probation · Practice · Desistance · Voice · Hibernian

exceptionalism
In the discipline of criminology, given its theoretical origins in sociology

and in particular the influence of social theory, we are often less preoc-
cupied with the subject—the individual actor—than one might expect.
Summed up in the facetious quote ‘if you want to know why he did

Switzerland AG 2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60593-3_3
28 O. LYNCH ET AL.
it, don’t ask a criminologist’ (Jefferson 2002, p. 149) the limited and
inadequate conceptualisations of the subject in criminology is apparent.
This gap, even in light of the critical awakening in criminology and
even with the inclusion of the offender in Young’s square of crime (Lea
2016), was left to be filled by psychology, a role that was reluctantly
shouldered. The contribution of psychology to the discipline of crim-
inology has always been somewhat controversial, however, increasingly
we are seeing true interdisciplinarity overcome this tension. Rather than
researchers and practitioners remaining in their disciplinary silos, we see
cross disciplinary training becoming the norm, we see the integration of
or at least reconciling of psychological theories with social theory and
we see the cross fertilisation of methods, particularly data collection and
data analysis. Following the advice of Horney (2006, p. 14) where she
advocates that ‘criminologists [to] take into account human complexity
as we construct our theories on crime and delinquency’ criminologists in
Ireland are doing just that. Dr Deirdre Healy, coming from the psycho-
logical tradition and influenced particularly by forensic psychology very
much epitomises such interdisciplinarity in her work. Her training in both
psychology and criminology as well as her work with practitioners has
ensured she brings together the subject, the ecology and the system in
her work on Probation.
Attending to real world problems and the relief of significant social
issues is a theme that runs across a number of the chapters in this volume,
for Dr Deirdre Healy it is no different. In this chapter, she emphasises that
her own interest in criminology was led by a desire to see the application
of academic knowledge to prison and probation issues. Seeking a solution
led approach, Dr Healy recognised the importance of having those indi-
viduals who directly experienced the criminal justice system contribute to
how we might imagine change in this field. Attending to the voices of
those who are marginalised in society was a key issue for her research
and she discusses how giving space so that all individuals are heard in
society, but also that society listens to these voices is vital. Theoretical
concepts that inform Dr Healy’s work such as recidivism, dehumanisa-
tion, othering and social identity are discussed in this chapter and she
traces her academic journey from its psychological origins and documents
the influence of key authors on her work. In this chapter Dr Healy also
speaks about new methods in researching criminology and how innovative
qualitative methods might serve the discipline.
3 A CONVERSATION WITH DR DEIRDRE HEALY 29
Biography
Dr Deirdre Healy is Director of the Institute of Criminology and Asso-
ciate Professor at the Sutherland School of Law, in University College
Dublin. Her teaching at UCD covers desistance and criminological
theory. She completed her Ph.D. in UCD, where she developed an
interest in imprisonment and its alternatives and researched crime and
punishment in Ireland. Dr Healy is currently involved in researching the
oral history of probation services in Ireland, which aims at integrating
views on the service from the point of view of both staff and users. She is
also a member of COST—Action on Offender Supervision in Europe,
a European Union Initiative which wants to connect researchers and
institutions in Europe on topics of relevance and to build a network
around this work. Among Dr Healy’s recent published works there are
‘The Dynamics of Desistance: Charting Pathways through Change’ and the
‘Routledge Handbook of Irish Criminology’.
Suggested Readings from Prof. Healy

Healy, D., Hamilton, C., Daly, Y., & Butler, M. (Eds.). (2015). The
Routledge handbook of Irish criminology. Abingdon: Routledge.
Healy, D. (2020). From Celtic Tiger to Celtic Phoenix: Exploring the
relationship between anomie and crime in Ireland. Deviant Behavior,
41(1), 70–86.
Healy, D. (2010). The dynamics of desistance: Charting pathways through
change. London: Willan.
The Path to an Academic Life

I studied psychology and philosophy in Trinity College Dublin and in
second or third year, I started to think about my future, what I would
like to do afterwards. The common route for psychology students is to go
into practice as a clinical psychologist, but this career didn’t quite interest
me, so I was a little bit at sea as to where I wanted to go. I had an idea
in my mind of what kind of job I’d like, or at least the boxes I’d like to
tick, and when we were given options about what final year subjects we
would like to study, one of the options was forensic psychology and as
soon as I saw that it clicked with me instantly. I knew that it was what I
wanted to do afterwards. So, once I finished my degree I did a little bit
30 O. LYNCH ET AL.
of work experience, just to make sure that I was happy with my choice
of field, and during that time I applied for a Ph.D. over in UCD where I
am based now. Criminology was so new in Ireland at the time, there were
no established career pathways, but luckily the Institute of Criminology
had been set up in the previous year or two and one of my lecturers knew
about it and she suggested I speak to the director who was Peter Young
at the time and that’s what I did. For me the Ph.D. in Criminology made
me realise that this is where I belong and since then research has always
been my first love.
But even when I was studying psychology I was always thinking about
the practical usages of knowledge. It is all very well to be in an academic
setting with other academics which is great and wonderful for us but I also
wanted to do something that had practical usages and applications. Proba-
tion interested me at that time because there was a huge focus among
policymakers and politicians on imprisonment as the solution, the only
solution, to the crime problem. So, I thought it would be really inter-
esting to look at probation as an alternative to custody and as a sanction
in its own right. I was also interested to hear what people under supervi-
sion thought about their experience, so that was really my starting point
for my Ph.D. research. I suppose what motivated me was wanting to learn
directly from people who had the experience of supervision and realising
there must be other, more effective ways to deal with crime than impris-
onment. That is what attracted me to the subject in the first place and
what drew me into doing the Ph.D. later on.
For Information
UCD Institute of Criminology: https://www.ucd.ie/criminol/.
Becoming a Criminologist
Criminology ticked all the boxes; firstly, it was varied, no experience was
the same, day by day was very, very different so it was never boring.
But more importantly it had a social value. I was very struck even at a
young age by the plight of people who were marginalised, maybe treated
as outcasts in society, perhaps people who were drug addicts or people
who had committed a crime. There was a sense that they were different
from the rest of us, that they didn’t deserve the same support as the rest
of us and that never sat well with me. I always wanted to hear more about
people’s experiences, and to help give them a voice to a certain extent.

Obviously, I was doing interviews throughout my Ph.D. research and that
was a way to give people a voice, albeit filtered through my own world
view. I suppose it wasn’t a direct voice, but I really wanted their voices to
be recognised and to be heard by people in public debates. I really wanted
to get their perspectives into those debates and to humanise them in the
eyes of the public. I know even from speaking to people outside academia
who have read my work and who are not familiar with the area at all, they
would often say ‘wow these people are articulate, they are really intelli-
gent, you know they seem like good people’ and they were almost always
surprised by that. Ultimately, I felt my job was partly done even just by
making people think differently about a group that was marginalised.
And in the literature that I was reading most used recidivism as the
outcome measure, but this seemed very flawed to me because it was very
binary, you know, you reoffend or you don’t. There are many cases where
people are offending less often or committing less serious offences, so it
didn’t seem like the right measure. Also, from what I had learned at that
time, I felt it was quite narrow—whether someone was still offending
or not. If someone had stopped offending, but was still suffering from
addiction problems or homelessness, could you call that a success? So I
was grappling with these issues and my supervisor, Prof. Ian O’Donnell,
then recommended that I look at Shadd Maruna’s book ‘Making Good’
and as soon as I read it—it was like a lightbulb went off in my head and
suddenly I said ‘yes, desistance is what I am interested in studying’.
Recommended Reading
Maruna, S. (2001). Making good: How ex-convicts reform and rebuild their
lives. Chicago: American Psychological Association.
Contributions to the Field

I would describe my work as sitting in maybe three research areas, the
first is desistance. Desistance is really the process of how people stop
offending and it involves a lot of different factors sometimes indepen-
dent of the person and sometimes internal to the person such as agency,
hope, motivation and coping skills. It involves social aspects as well, the
idea that desistance is not just up to the individual, society has to help
32 O. LYNCH ET AL.
them by providing opportunities to change. Secondly, I was interested in

the probation supervision experience as viewed from the perspective of
people on probation and also from the perspective of people who work
as probation officers. The third area I am interested in is victimology.
Victims are often regarded as the polar opposite of offenders. So how
can you do research that focuses on victims and also look at offend-
ers’ experiences? But I would argue and people in the field would agree,
that these research interests are not incompatible but rather complemen-
tary. For instance, offenders can also be victims and research suggests that
people who commit crime have a high rate of victimisation. So, it is not
just victims vs offenders, they may be part of the same population. Most
importantly, the main thing that victims want to come out of the crim-
inal justice process is a reduction in future offending and a reduction in
future victimisation. So, a criminal justice approach that helps to reduce
offending has benefits for victims and offenders. For me, the two areas
are quite compatible even though on the surface they may not look like
they are.
Suggested Readings
Healy, D. (2015). Desistance, recidivism, and reintegration. In The
Hart, W., & Healy, D. (2018). ‘An inside job’: An autobiographical
account of desistance. European Journal of Probation, 10(2), 103–119.
Carr, N., Healy, D., Kennefick, L., & Maguire, N. (2013). A review of
the research on offender supervision in the Republic of Ireland and
Northern Ireland. Irish Probation Journal, 10, 50–74.
Fitzgibbon, W., & Healy, D. (2017). Lives and spaces: Photovoice
and offender supervision in Ireland and England. Criminology and
Criminology Justice, 19(1), 3–25.
One piece of work on probation that I published—the Lives and Spaces

article—grew out of a research network, a COST Action project called
Offender Supervision in Europe which was chaired by Fergus McNeill
and Kristel Beyens. The network was set up to explore the experiences of
probationers and probation officers as well as the legal and policy situation
across Europe. So researchers from each European country participated
in working groups that focused on different aspects of offender supervi-
sion, and I joined the ‘experiencing supervision’ working group. One of
my colleagues was Wendy Fitzgibbon, who is now at the University of

Leicester, and she came up with this fantastic idea of using photovoice
as a way to study the supervision experience. The photovoice process,
for those who aren’t familiar with it, began with us asking a group of
men who were on probation to go out and take photographs that repre-
sented their experience of supervision. We developed the photos, and
then laid the photos out in front of the men on the table and they
discussed why they took those particular photos. They also gave the
photos captions so you have the photography but also the voice aspect
of it as well. Ultimately the purpose of this method is to convey people’s
experiences of supervision to policymakers so we held an exhibition of the
photographs afterwards. In the Irish case, we exhibited the pictures to
audiences of policymakers, practitioners and judges in two different sites
in Dublin. Wendy created this project within the context of the COST
Action and she completed a number of pilot studies in England, Scot-
land and Germany with other colleagues from the network. Because I
was particularly interested in the results I asked her to come to Ireland
to duplicate the study with me. So, we conducted the study in a Dublin
based probation programme over a number of days and we produced a
huge number of photographs highlighting the different experiences of
supervision.
Recommended Reading
Offender Supervision in Europe (COST Project): https://www.offenders
upervision.eu.
Fitzgibbon, W., & Stengel, C. M. (2018). Women’s voices made visible:
Photovoice in visual criminology. Punishment & Society, 20(4), 411–
431.
Giving Voice---Methods in Criminology

Photo voice was challenging to a certain extent for me. I would not
consider myself a very visually minded person and the thing that struck
me most was that, while we were still in the working groups in the COST
Action, we went out to take photographs that we thought would repre-
sent supervision. I went out thinking that I wouldn’t be able to capture
anything meaningful. Yet, when I went out I suddenly saw the world in
a very different way. I was able to pick out images that to me reflected
34 O. LYNCH ET AL.
how I saw supervision. So even though I was going outside my comfort

zone, what really interested me about this methodology was its potential
to enable people to explore issues from a different perspective and maybe
even discover latent talents that they didn’t know they had. I certainly
didn’t know I had that capacity before I did it so that was really the major
attraction to me but at the same time of course it was challenging because
it was very different. It is one thing to sit down with a questionnaire and
ask your set list of questions but photovoice is more open ended. Partici-
pants have more control over the process so they decide what photos they
want to take and they are in charge of what is important in the research. It
is challenging in a way to adopt a more collaborative approach to research
and to work as a co-researcher with people. It is a very different way of
doing research and I have to say I really enjoyed the whole experience.
I have interviewed people about their experiences under supervision
and you get certain information from that. But when these men went
out and took photos about their experiences, they took photos about
specific aspects of probation that they found helpful—say for example,
the kind of support provided by probation officers or other workers in
education and training—that was consistent with research I had done in
the past. But they also brought in some extra things about the context
of supervision; for example, what it is like to live in their communities,
what their families are like and so on. It was represented quite visually
and it was really enlightening because you really see what it is like to stop
offending and undergo probation in a particular social context. They took
photos of homelessness, of locations where people had been murdered,
alcohol, gambling. All of these kinds of things show the context and the
challenges surrounding the supervision experience, much more than an
interview would. I think the other thing that really showed up that we
may not have seen otherwise was that it was not just probation on its
own—you have to look at supervision as part of a process. This process
might start before somebody is sentenced and what really struck me was
that a lot of participants talked about the role of lawyers and how helpful
they had been in terms standing up for them, getting them the help
they needed before sentencing and that’s another area I think that hasn’t
been researched extensively—the role of lawyers beyond just defending
their client in court. Lawyers can actually play an important role in desis-
tance and in facilitating effective supervision as well. So, it is all these
extra things that you wouldn’t perhaps get if you had your structured
questionnaire in front of you.
Current Projects
I have a number of projects on the go at the moment. One that I am
currently working on is in relation to the Probation Service. I am working
with Louise Kennefick from Maynooth University on an oral history of
the Probation Service, which is funded by the Fitzpatrick Family Founda-
tion. We are interviewing people who started work as probation officers
from the 1960s and we are also interviewing people who started work
every decade since then. Over the next few weeks, we are going to start
interviewing people who were on probation during the same timeframe
and what we are hoping to do is produce an oral history of the Proba-
tion Service in Ireland from the 1960s to the present day, supported
with archival research. The project offers a different angle on the areas
of interest I have had over the last ten years or so.
Key Influences and Contributions

I find the issue of what is influential quite challenging to think about;
first of all, what do we mean by influential because you know it can
be measured in so many ways—is it the number of citations an article
receives, is it that the findings have been used to aid policymaking? Or
is it because someone who is working in the field or has been subject to
supervision comes up and says ‘you know that research really represented
my true experience’? So if I was trying to figure out one piece of my work
that covers all those things, I would have to say my book ‘The Dynamics
of Desistance: Charting Pathways Through Change’ which was published
in 2010. It arose out of my Ph.D. research and included findings from a
postdoctoral study that I completed a few years later.
And in terms of influence, criminology in Ireland is such a vibrant field
at the moment. But of course the main person I would have to mention as
having a major influence on the field of Irish criminology is my colleague
Ian O’Donnell who has done a lot of influential work over many years.
He has contributed hugely to establishing the field in Ireland and has
shown that Irish research can make a significant contribution to interna-
tional literature. One of the things that really strikes me about his work
is that it manages to create a bridge between the Irish experience and the
international literature. That is a model I am trying to adopt in my own
research as well because I do think that the Irish experience is very inter-
esting for international audiences. Maybe we don’t always appreciate that
36 O. LYNCH ET AL.
enough and I think Ian has done a really good job of advancing the field
in Ireland and also acting as an ambassador for Irish criminology abroad.
And Ian wrote an article maybe fifteen years ago, and he described
Criminology as being in its infancy and it was. There was certainly a lot
of work to be done to bring Irish criminology to a level where it is actu-
ally vibrant and prospering. But I think, even in the last five years, a lot
has happened to the point where you could describe Irish criminology as
being in its adolescence and that is certainly where I think it is. In a book
I co-edited with Clare Hamilton, Michelle Butler and Yvonne Daly, the
Routledge Handbook of Irish Criminology, we tried to map Irish Crimi-
nology in the intervening years. I feel on the one hand the field has moved
on a lot from where it was in 2000, but I suppose it still has a long way to
go too. In terms of what’s next, that’s again a hard question to answer,
because I think each generation of criminologists can bring something
new to the table, so the questions that my generation is interested in may
not be the focus of the next generation. All I can I say really is that I look
forward to seeing the new angles they take on the subject.
O’Donnell, I. (2005). Crime and justice in the Republic of Ireland.
European Journal of Criminology, 2(1), 99–131.
Healy, D., Hamilton, C., Daly, Y., & Butler, M. (Eds.). (2015). The
Strengths and Weaknesses of Irish Criminology

The first strength of the field is the Irish angle, that it is in fact Irish.
That might sound like an odd thing to say but the idea of Irish excep-
tionalism or Hibernian exceptionalism as it is called quite often, gives us a
really strong starting point for looking at the generalisability of theories.
Whether it is theories on punitiveness or desistance or probation super-
vision, it is important to really investigate those theories to see if they
have international relevance or are specific to a particular jurisdiction.
Often when you read the literature from the countries that lead crim-
inology internationally—America, the UK—researchers often talk about
their findings as if they are universally relevant which isn’t always the case.
So, looking at things through an Irish lens can provide a different angle.
Just to give one example—in Ian O’Donnell’s work, he created a concept
Another random document with
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juste perspective toute l’antiquité classique si bien dépassée et en
même temps conservée par l’esprit catholique. J’ai lu que Saint
Jérôme s’accusait de lire avec trop de plaisir les auteurs païens.
Ainsi le plus beau du passé revenait dans la pensée chrétienne, et
l’humanisait. C’est un beau et juste mouvement qui ramène ainsi nos
idées à l’enfance, et les mûrit de nouveau dans la moindre de nos
méditations.
Je dirais d’après cela que d’un côté ce sont les vues plus
étendues de l’histoire qui mettent en place l’antiquité classique et la
révolution chrétienne ; car ce grand drame humain est lui-même petit
dans l’immense suite du progrès. Mais, d’un autre côté, ces
antécédents proches font vivre les autres par une reconnaissance
qui soutient les différences, et nous fait historiens. Un Chinois est
trop différent de nous peut-être ; de même un fétichiste d’Amérique
ou de Polynésie. Tacite est un autre genre de sauvage, bien plus
près de nous ; nous ne pouvons méconnaître notre frère ; et c’est le
beau d’abord qui nous en préserve, le beau, bien plus puissant que
le vrai. Sans ce passage, qui d’Homère porté déjà par Platon, nous
conduit tout près de nos naïfs ancêtres et congénères, nous
pourrions bien connaître les Égyptiens, Chinois et Peaux-Rouges
comme on connaît les mœurs des fourmis, tout en restant inhumains
peut-être. Je ne sais rien des Jésuites que par ouï-dire ; peut-être
eussent-ils été plus fanatiques encore sans ce fort préjugé, fondé
sur le jugement esthétique, et qui les tirait hors du temps présent.
Par quoi ils formaient des esprits libres, bien contre leur intention.
Gardons-nous, au rebours, de former des esprits esclaves, bien
contre notre intention.
VI
HUMANITÉS
Il n’y a point d’Humanités modernes, par la même raison qui fait

que coopération n’est pas société. Il faut que le passé éclaire le
présent, sans quoi nos contemporains sont à nos yeux des animaux
énigmatiques. Ils le sont pour nous, si nous manquons d’études ; ils
le sont en eux-mêmes, s’ils manquent d’études. L’homme qui
invente le téléphone sans fil n’est qu’un animal ingénieux ; ce qu’il
peut montrer d’esprit vient d’autre source.
J’ai observé un certain genre d’incrédulité qui ne suffit à rien. Les
dogmes de l’Église sont à première vue indémontrables et même
absurdes. Soit donc, et laissons-les. Mais celui qui regarde dans les
perspectives du temps aperçoit beaucoup d’autres dieux, d’autres
cérémonies, et des temples qui parlent humainement. Chaîne
d’énigmes qui détourne de s’ébahir parce qu’un polytechnicien va à
la messe. Les hommes ont suivi bien d’autres messes. Mais il faut
s’approcher ; il faut connaître un peu plus intimement le peuple du
Droit, qui est le Romain, et le peuple Sophiste, qui est le Grec ; sans
négliger le peuple adorant, qui est le Juif. Ici un sublime sauvage et
impossible ; ici, par une crainte sans mesure, les superstitions de la
main et du pied, du couteau de table et du pot à beurre. Dans les
deux autres peuples, si proches de nous aussi, mais par d’autres
côtés, des dieux en tout bois et sur toute colline, des oracles, des
augures et des haruspices. L’Égypte et l’Assyrie, incompréhensibles,
forment le fond lointain. L’Orient rêve encore derrière, et le
Polynésien danse. On ignorerait tout de l’homme si l’on n’avait, par
bonheur, familiarité avec les Juifs, avec les Grecs, avec les
Romains, qui ont tant avancé en diverses parties de la sagesse,
gardant avec cela d’étonnantes erreurs. Celui qui ignore cela est
sauvage encore, par une incrédulité mal assise ; dont Montaigne
nous peut guérir ; mais il nous renvoie aux anciens ; il y faut aller. Ou
bien considérer Pascal comme une sorte de fou, et même
Descartes, qui pélerina à Lorette. Ainsi le Moderne, j’entends sans
culture rétrospective, ne voit que fous ; mais je l’attends au
spiritisme, à la théosophie, à tous ces fruits de l’étonnement ; car ce
sont des moments dépassés ; mais il faut les avoir dépassés et
surmontés par une sorte de jeu. Les études classiques assurent le
pied sur cette planète ; l’homme s’y étudie à croire sans se jeter. Nos
folles guerres viennent certainement de trop croire, comme il arrive à
ceux qui n’ont rien vu.
Polynésiens téléphonant ; cela ne fait pas un homme. D’où ces
autels sanglants, et sans dieu. Mais tous les autels furent sanglants
et sans dieu. On ne remarque pas assez que l’humaniste, déjà avec
rosa la rose, se lave les mains de ce sang mêlé à l’eau de la source
Bandusienne. Les Bacchantes retournent à la frise de marbre.
Poésie guérit de frénésie. Les surprises du cœur sont disciplinées ;
un dieu balance l’autre. Le galop des Centaures ne jette plus dans la
charge panique. Déjà Socrate et Phèdre, leurs pieds nus dans l’eau,
s’amusaient à l’entendre. Ce sont nos travaux d’Hercule, et nos
voyages d’esprit, par quoi nous effaçons sur la médaille humaine ce
pli de fanatisme bas. D’où mûrira l’enthousiasme qui ne tue point.
Jaurès modèle. Modèle de tous, et du forgeron encore mieux ; car
toute force est redoutable, et à elle-même aussi. Les Belles-Lettres
donc pour tous ? Et pourquoi non ? Regardons cette idée en face.
VII
DE LA THÉOLOGIE
Il y a quelque chose de mort dans toute Théologie, quelque

chose de mort aussi dans toute Géométrie. Ce sont des idées sous
clef ; nul n’y va plus voir, et l’on en fait le compte par des registres et
abrégés, comme font les teneurs de livres. Or ces provisions d’esprit
se corrompent encore plus vite que les provisions de bouche. Et
qu’est-ce qu’une idée à laquelle on ne pense point ? Bossuet prouve
Dieu par les vérités éternelles. « Une vérité ne peut cesser d’être
vérité. Descartes meurt, Bossuet meurt, la vérité ne meurt point.
Mais comme une vérité n’est rien aussi sans quelque pensant, il
existe donc un Pensant éternel ». Voilà une pensée de disciple et
une armoire aux idées. Descartes est bien plus difficile à suivre,
parce qu’il brise l’armoire aux idées et les idées mêmes, allant
jusqu’à dire qu’il n’y a point du tout de vérités éternelles et que la
volonté de Dieu en décide à chaque instant, même du triangle et du
cercle. Comprenne qui pourra. Toujours est-il qu’il y a ici du scandale
et une occasion de douter de l’indubitable, par quoi la théologie de
Descartes se trouve animée d’incrédulité. Au feu les idoles. Ainsi va
le vrai Géomètre, toujours doutant et défaisant, d’où les idées
naissent et renaissent. Car je tiens que si l’on veut savoir ce que
c’est qu’une ligne droite il faut y penser toujours, j’entends la vouloir
et maintenir toujours, ce qui est douter et croire ensemble. Quant à
la ligne droite qui tient d’elle-même, et qui est enfermée en quelque
Palais des Mesures, je sais qu’elle n’est point droite. Rien au monde
n’est droit.
Rien au monde n’est juste. Aucun objet n’est Dieu. Mais l’homme
juste est celui qui pense toujours au juste, et continuellement le
maintient et le veut, imitant le Dieu de Descartes en cette création
continuée. C’est ainsi que le juste fait justice de tout, comme le
géomètre fait géométrie de tout. Un tel homme ne se fie point à
l’ordre des choses, et la pointe de son jugement toujours attaque la
justice établie et vénérée, la redressant d’après le modèle qui
n’existe pas. Ce feu du jugement moral, cette ardeur à briser, ce
culte du Dieu seulement aimé, nu, et sans aucune puissance, voilà
par où la religion vit et revit. Plus religion dans ce Socialiste que
dans ce Thomiste. Mais il se peut bien que le socialisme soit
théologique maintenant, et que la Justice soit maintenant sous clef
dans quelque Pavillon des Justes Mesures. L’idée aura donc péri par
la Suffisance.
On doit appeler machine, dans le sens le plus étendu, toute idée
sans penseur. Je remarque que la téléphonie sans fil guérit de
comprendre et même d’essayer de comprendre. Et l’avion a tué
l’idée de l’avion, comme les ailes, en l’oiseau, ont tué le doute, âme
des formules de Newton et d’Euler. Car qui pensera, si tout est
pensé ? Qui réglera, si tout est réglé ? La violence est l’effet
inévitable, et souvent prochain, d’une pensée sans aucun doute ; et
c’est ce que l’on voit en gros chez les fous. Peut-être est-il dans la
destinée de toute théologie, aussitôt achevée, de rouler sur la terre
comme un char d’assaut, C’est ainsi que la puissance déshonore la
justice.
VIII
DE L’ART DE PERSUADER
Pensant à Joseph de Maistre, je faisais une revue en moi-même

des hommes qui ont fait serment de croire ; et au premier rang
j’apercevais Socrate, tel que Platon le représente en son Gorgias, ou
bien dans sa République, faisant de la tête signe que non, à chaque
fois que les disputeurs l’accablent de leurs preuves d’expérience ; et,
comme dit justement Socrate, il n’est pas difficile de faire voir que la
force gouverne partout et que la justice est ce qui plaît aux plus
forts ; c’est le spectacle humain ; on n’entend que cela ; on ne voit
que cela. Suivez ces longues discussions en leurs détours, vous
verrez apparaître la justice, et soudain disparaître. On la saisit à la
fin ; il vient un moment heureux où toutes les parties de la nature
humaine sont rassemblées et comme pacifiées selon la loi interne
de justice, à laquelle les manifestations externes de la force sont de
loin subordonnées. Tout s’ordonne alors, et la vraie punition répond
à la vraie récompense. Mais, pour parvenir à cette vue, il faut autant
de patience au moins qu’en montre Socrate. Un lecteur pressé verra
partout l’injustice revenant toujours à la suite de la puissance, et la
justice autant démunie de preuves que de richesses. En quoi il n’y a
point de jeu ni d’artifice, mais au contraire la plus parfaite peinture de
ces tâtonnements et détours de pensée qui rebutent promptement
celui qui n’a pas juré. Il faut jurer d’abord, et dire non aux arguments
diaboliques avant de savoir comment on y répondra.
Autre chose encore, et qui irrite toujours un peu. Vous lisez ; vous
pesez au passage les preuves Socratiques ; vous les rassemblez ;
vous saisissez l’idée ; vous la confiez comme un trésor au coffret de
la mémoire. Mais le diable guette encore par là. Quand vous ouvrez
le coffret de nouveau, vous ne trouvez plus qu’une pincée de
cendres ; éléments dissous et dispersés ; chaos. Il faut tout refaire ; il
faut s’aider de nouveau de l’art socratique ; de nouveau l’injustice est
brillante et forte ; de nouveau la clameur diabolique assourdit le
pauvre homme ; il faut passer par ce chemin-là. Si le courage
manque, tout est dit. C’est pourquoi on voit trébucher tant de
penseurs vieillissants, et s’asseoir au festin de la Force, où l’on boit
l’hydromel dans le crâne de l’ennemi. J’ai vu un noble penseur se
lever et marcher à grands pas, allant et revenant, et disant à moi :
« On devrait savoir une bonne fois. Quand on a passé le lieu difficile,
on devrait le laisser derrière soi pour toujours. Et quand on a formé
l’idée, on devrait la posséder. Tout sera donc toujours à
recommencer » ? C’est ce que Socrate demandait en ces termes
mêmes. En tout, on veut une charte ou un diplôme, et dormir
dessus. Mais ce n’est point permis.
D’après ces rudes expériences, il faut comprendre ces préjugés
invincibles et volontaires que l’on rencontre en tout homme un peu
composé, et qui rendent si pénible le travail de prouver et de
convaincre. Combat difficile, où les meilleurs coups, les plus
savants, les mieux dirigés, sont justement ceux qui ébranlent le
moins l’adversaire. J’ai observé comment un esprit vigoureux
esquive la preuve forte, et qu’il voit venir de loin, refusant attention à
ce que vous dites, non parce qu’il le juge faible, mais parce qu’il le
juge fort, et récitant en lui-même son serment de fidélité comme une
prière. L’homme est beau alors. Car, si difficile que soit notre
condition de pensant, songez qu’elle serait tout à fait misérable, si
nous devions abandonner une idée précieuse, et bien des fois
éprouvée, dès que nous n’avons rien à répondre à quelque
disputeur. Dans le fait, personne ne pense ainsi. Tout homme
pensant s’appuie sur une foi invincible ; c’est son réduit et donjon.
D’où je tire la règle des règles, qui est de ne point penser contre
l’autre, mais avec l’autre, et de prendre sa profonde et chère
pensée, autant que je la devine, comme humaine et mienne. Et
quand cette pensée est la Justice éternelle, qu’on l’appelle Dieu ou
comme on voudra, on peut s’y établir, et travailler en partant de là ;
prises de ce côté-là, les murailles tomberont.
IX
PROPHÉTIES
En aucun temps je ne me fiai aux coteaux de l’Aisne comme en

l’été de l’an quatorze. Je me trouvais réconcilié à cette terre,
sauvage un peu par ses roches, et par les noms sinistres qui
rappelaient les guerres de l’autre siècle. De précieux amis
vieillissaient là. Vingt marches de pierre me conduisaient à leur
jardin fleuri ; vingt marches encore, et l’on était au paisible jardin des
morts, fleuri de marjolaine et d’hysope, autour de l’église paysanne.
De ce promontoire la vue s’étendait presque jusqu’à Soissons, par
une trouée fameuse. Sur le plateau à blé, presque à la hauteur du
coq indicateur des vents, passait la Route des Dames au nom
charmant. La falaise était riche de sureaux et de vignes et portait,
sur ses pentes arides, des genévriers et un rosier sauvage à odeur
musquée que je n’ai vu que là. On pouvait s’y plaire ; et, en ce mois
de Juillet, j’achevais une clôture durable autour d’une maison de
tisserand.
C’est là que j’entendis deux prophéties. Une première fois moi-
même je vaticinai, je ne sais pourquoi, en compagnie d’un
philosophe paysan, que l’on jugeait un peu fou. Cette sécurité des
travaux, dont l’image s’offrait partout, me parut d’un moment, comme
elle était. Il ne faut qu’une peste, disais-je, ou une querelle entre les
hommes, pour que cette sauvage écorce de la terre, que l’on voit par
places, recouvre le coteau, le plateau, la vallée, et les collines
éparses semblables à des îles. Le soir, qui effaçait les différences, et
la vue aussi de mon mélancolique compagnon, me faisaient penser
à ces choses ; mais il me semble maintenant que je déclamai un peu
plus que l’état présent ne le conseillait. L’avenir d’alors, maintenant
passé, donne trop de sens à ces paroles de hasard.
Un autre jour ce fut une sorte de sorcière qui prophétisa, courbée
en deux par les travaux, levant vers moi son regard bleu et son
visage couleur de brique. Elle me montrait, dans le jardin et dans les
vergers en terrasse, une quantité étonnante de taupinières, et elle
parla en ces termes : « Vous savez ce qu’on dit par ici et ce que je
sais ; autant de taupinières, autant de tombes. » Elle redit plusieurs
fois la même chose, en regardant à droite et à gauche, comme elle
avait coutume. Sur quoi je fermai mon imagination comme une
porte, admirant comment la ressemblance fait preuve en ces esprits
trop faibles pour soulever la métaphore. Or il y eut, partout par là,
comme on sait, encore plus de tombes que de taupinières.
De ces rencontres émouvantes, je ne pense rien. Il y a, à toute
minute, des rencontres aussi admirables que celles-là, si l’on voulait
admirer ; et tout est signe dès que l’on cherche des signes. Du
moins je comprends un peu mieux les temps homériques, et ces
présages continuellement tirés des oiseaux, des nuages, de la
foudre ; dont quelques-uns se trouvaient vérifiés par hasard, et
beaucoup réalisés par l’action de ceux-là même qui y croyaient ; car
souvent l’oracle conseille en même temps qu’il annonce ; et ce n’est
pas merveille si la mêlée devient terrible, selon la prédiction, du
moment qu’on y croit. Le monde n’a point changé, et notre sagesse
repose toute sur elle-même. Qui veut croire trouvera des preuves,
d’autant que le souvenir ne retrouve jamais le passé tel qu’il fut,
mais le recouvre de ce qui a suivi, suspendant au présage
l’accomplissement comme une couronne. Les dieux sont les
premiers nés du souvenir.
X
DES MÉTAPHORES
Je n’approuve point ceux qui veulent changer la pantoufle de

verre, dans Cendrillon, disant que ce n’est point du verre, et qu’il n’y
eut jamais de pantoufles de verre, chose dure et cassante, mais qu’il
s’agit de vair qui est fourrure souple et chaude. Remarquez qu’il y a
bien d’autres choses impossibles, dans les autres contes et dans
celui-là. Mais l’érudit est assez content d’avoir remis une pantoufle
en place ; il attend l’occasion d’expliquer par la même méthode la
citrouille qui devient carrosse, ou cette ronde de petites filles, qui, à
force de tourner, devient motte de beurre. On peut rire du pédant ;
mais il faut quelquefois le prendre au sérieux. C’est la sottise armée.
Je range le Pédant dans la puissante classe des Détourneurs,
dans laquelle on trouve aussi des espèces non dépourvues
d’élégance. Et la chasse du Détourneur est une chasse aux Idées.
Dès qu’une idée s’envole ils la tuent, comme on tue les Idées, en
détournant de les chercher. L’Esprit se jette sur quelque pauvre
relation bien aisée à saisir et à redresser. Il rit de cette victoire facile,
et le Détourneur marque un point.
J’ai dit souvent que tous les contes sont vrais ; mais ce n’est pas
assez dire. La profonde sagesse populaire est plus rusée que nos
philosophes. Et, au rebours du Détourneur, elle nous met en garde
contre cette fausse Raison, qui n’est qu’imagination conforme à la
coutume. Et par un piquant moyen, aussi ancien que l’espèce
humaine, qui est de nous jeter l’absurde aux yeux, de grossir et de
redoubler l’impossible, par quoi l’imagination est définie, en même
temps qu’elle est éveillée, et rappelée à son rôle de Folle. A quoi
servent aussi ces comparaisons étranges que le génie poétique jette
comme un défi. J’admire la grandeur des enfants, qui ne discutent
jamais sur la Lettre. Non qu’ils saisissent d’abord l’Esprit ; mais ils
savent bien que l’Esprit ne vise pas ce maigre gibier. Ainsi en
s’amusant de l’absurde ils ne déshonorent pas l’Esprit, mais au
contraire ils l’honorent. Par la croissance qu’il sent à l’œuvre en lui,
et qui lui donne espoir et patience, ce bel âge voit grand. Il attend
quelque chose de mieux que des fictions cohérentes. Certes il y a de
la Majesté à laisser jouer l’Imagination en même temps que le corps,
et par les mêmes lois. Mais il y a quelque chose d’impérieux aussi à
vouloir que l’absurde soit conservé comme il est ; c’est refuser les
petites raisons. Shakespeare se moque de ceux qui voudraient
comprendre comment Othello ou Hamlet sont passés d’un lieu à
l’autre, invitant ainsi énergiquement le spectateur à comprendre
d’autres vérités, plus cachées et plus difficiles. Sur l’absurde même
l’Esprit rebondit, car il n’y peut rester. Cette apparence ne peut
tromper, il faut donc voir au delà. Ces signes nous délivrent des
signes. Au contraire, par des signes de raisonnable apparence, nous
venons à penser les signes, et la coutume nous tient. Telle est la
vieillesse de l’Esprit.
XI
DES APPARENCES
Quand un Hindou se marque au visage de signes rouges ou

bleus selon sa caste, vous ne demandez point si cela est vrai ou
faux. Il vaudrait mieux se demander en quel sens et sous quel
rapport cela est vrai ; pour le faux, il n’est point dans les faits ni dans
les actions, ni dans les pensées ; il y a vérité de tout ; il faut
seulement dire que nous sommes bien loin de connaître la vérité de
tout ; mais la privation n’est rien. Attendez les exemples. Il y a une
apparence du mouvement du ciel autour de son axe ; cette
apparence n’est qu’apparence, c’est dire qu’elle n’est point vraie ;
mais je ne dirai pas non plus qu’elle est fausse ; car, placés comme
nous sommes sur cette terre qui tourne, nous ne pouvons la voir
tourner. Pour mieux dire, je ne vois aucune chose comme elle est.
Je vois à l’angle de mon plafond trois angles joints dont je sais qu’ils
sont d’équerre tous les trois, mais je les vois obtus tous les trois, et
la perspective m’apprend que je dois les voir ainsi. Si je change de
place, je les verrai obtus autrement ; mais ce sont toujours trois
angles droits. Ceux qui retournent dans leur tête les paradoxes
d’Einstein croient souvent qu’ils ont à choisir entre plusieurs
apparences du temps et un temps unique ; je les invite à réfléchir sur
l’objet unique, qui donne pourtant d’innombrables perspectives. Je
dirai volontiers que cet Hindou qui se peint le visage se règle sur
quelque perspective de l’existence physiologique et politique ; et,
autant que je connais le vrai de la chose, il faut que je comprenne
cette perspective qui est sienne ; et aussi bien cette perspective d’un
autre qui se fait moine, et de moi-même aussi qui mets une cravate.
Si vous me proposez une religion, je l’examine, non point avec
l’idée qu’elle est fausse, mais au contraire avec l’idée qu’elle est
vraie. D’où vient donc que je passerai pour irréligieux ? C’est que je
pense la même chose de toutes les religions. Chacune d’elles n’est
qu’une perspective plus ou moins déformée dans laquelle il faut que
je retrouve l’objet unique. Travail copernicien. Difficile assurément,
mais considérez ce qui arrive quand on me montre des tours de
passe-passe ou des jeux de miroirs. Ce sont alors des apparences
étranges ; mais je sais sans le moindre doute que si je connaissais
bien les objets dont ces apparences sont les apparences, je ne
verrais plus rien d’étrange dans ce spectacle.
Lorsque Galilée disait que la terre tourne, c’était parce qu’il avait
deviné le secret d’une apparence, et vu, en quelque sorte, le double
fond de la boîte. Ainsi, bien loin qu’il pensât que les autres se
trompaient, au contraire, il comprenait leur erreur même comme
vérité, et se trouvait ainsi plus assuré de ce qu’ils disaient qu’eux-
mêmes. Mais eux voulaient le ramener aux apparences, et lui faire
jurer qu’il voyait les apparences. Aussi lui, qui voyait le soleil tourner,
comme voit n’importe quel astronome, ne trouva sans doute point
autant de difficulté qu’on voudrait croire à dire comme ils disaient ; et
peut-être comprit-il aussi le vrai de leur colère, et l’éternel objet
politique sous ces menaçantes apparences. Marc-Aurèle a dit là-
dessus le dernier mot peut-être : « Instruis-les, si tu peux ; si tu ne
peux les instruire, supporte-les. » Quand le roi David chante :
« L’Éternel est mon rocher », je lui donne raison, mais non pas
comme il voudrait : on peut parier qu’avant la fin de mon discours il
m’aurait fait pendre. Il faut être bien intolérant pour se laisser
pendre.
XII
SCIENCE ET RELIGION
A ceux qui voudraient dire que l’homme est arrivé à la sagesse

par la prudence, je conte souvent ce que j’ai lu dans les journaux au
lendemain d’un attentat politique. Deux bombes avaient été lancées ;
une seule éclata ; l’autre fut portée au commissaire peut-être deux
jours après par un homme qui l’avait trouvée et mise dans sa poche.
J’ai supposé d’abord que cet homme téméraire n’arrivait pas à croire
que ce morceau de fonte en forme de pomme de pin pouvait éclater
au moindre choc et mettre un corps vivant en charpie ; et il faut bien
supposer cela, mais il ne faut pas expliquer cette action seulement
par l’ignorance ; un chimiste peut bien être téméraire aussi.
J’aimerais mieux dire que l’homme en solitude, et attentif surtout à
ses actions, n’arrive jamais à imaginer un événement redoutable. Et,
à bien regarder, un corps sain, vigoureux et intact ne peut point
témoigner du tout, par ses affections, que la griffe du lion peut le
déchirer, mais au contraire il exclut naturellement une telle image.
Ainsi le danger serait trop tard connu toujours, et l’expérience
n’instruirait guère.
Chose digne de remarque, la cérémonie modifie bien plus
énergiquement les sentiments de chacun. Cela vient de ce que,
dans la cérémonie, les actions sont prévues et faciles, et que notre
corps est principalement occupé à imiter les mouvements d’autrui ;
nous sommes tous alors des tragédiens de bonne foi. Par exemple
la peur nous est alors directement communiquée, à la manière d’une
maladie ; l’objet quel qu’il soit, même absent ou invisible, reçoit de
cette peur une puissance sans mesure. On peut comprendre ainsi
que des hommes très résolus en leurs actions soient comme des
enfants lorsqu’ils pensent aux revenants, aux lutins, aux diables,
quoiqu’ils ne les connaissent que par des récits. Un récit est bien
plus puissant que la chose même, par l’effervescence commune au
récitant et à la foule des auditeurs.
J’irais jusqu’à dire que les choses ne savent point toucher l’esprit
de l’homme ; elles ne passent point jusque-là ; cet animal a l’esprit
cuirassé contre tout expérience. Mais le cri d’un enfant, le soupir
d’une femme, le léger vent d’un geste humain, tous les signes
entrent librement dans la citadelle. Encore mieux les armées de
signes qui s’envolent d’une assemblée. D’où il arrive que l’homme
croit moins ce qu’il a vu que ce qu’on lui raconte, ce qui éclaire
toutes nos passions. Mais je veux retenir seulement ceci, que
l’histoire des Sciences expose sans l’expliquer, que l’homme est
venu à la prudence par le respect, et à la Science par la Religion ;
autrement dit que nos premières connaissances, et les seules que
nous prenions naturellement au sérieux, sont de ouï-dire, et non
d’expérience. La crainte de Dieu serait donc la première des
craintes, et le modèle de toutes.
XIII
LE TEMPLE
Une des idées de l’Eupalinos est que le temple meut l’homme ;

par quoi l’architecture ressemble à la musique. Mais il faut voir
comment le temple meut l’homme. Par ceci que les grands reliefs
s’aplatissent dès que l’on s’arrête, comme si l’air des profondeurs en
était chassé. Au contraire, dès que le spectateur se met en
mouvement, si peu que ce soit, le temple aussitôt déplace ses
perspectives, et d’autant plus que les parties en apparence
juxtaposées sont réellement plus éloignées les unes des autres ;
mais c’est ce qu’il faut essayer, car on ne le croit jamais assez, en se
déplaçant seulement d’un pas devant l’entrecoupement des arceaux
et des flèches, ou devant les éclipses des colonnades. C’est
explorer la profondeur, et se rendre sensible la solidité de la chose.
C’est donc la mort de la chose dans son apparence qu’il faut vaincre
par le mouvement. Ainsi le monument nous appelle ; mais d’une
certaine manière, selon sa structure. Et Hegel a bien su dire que la
cathédrale gothique forme le plus énergique appel, par l’opposition
du dehors et du dedans, par l’énigme des contreforts et par la
promesse des portes et cette foule pressée des statues qui nous
font un chemin. Une colonnade grecque nous meut d’autre façon.
Ainsi la Madeleine serait plus politique que Notre-Dame. Mais de
toute façon il faut se mouvoir ; et c’est par le mouvement que le
monument nous fait penser.
La peinture au contraire nous tient immobile. Supposons un
monument peint dans le fond d’un tableau ; cette image ne répond
point à nos mouvements, et l’on n’observe point ce glissement des
colonnes qui se montrent et se cachent selon nos pas ; ce qui
rabaisse aussitôt le monument peint au niveau des accessoires ; ce
qui, surtout, nous avertit que cette apparence doit rester à l’état
d’apparence, et qu’ici le vrai est de nous et non de l’objet. Il est donc
profondément vrai que l’architecture et la peinture ne sont point du
même âge. Car le puissant objet de pierre nous tire à une pensée
commune de manière à effacer toute méditation de soi sur soi ; il
nous soumet à la doctrine. Mais la peinture au contraire, par cette
apparence désormais fixée, nie l’être et divinise l’existence. Le
miracle de la peinture c’est de donner être à ce qui passe ; c’est
pourquoi tout peut plaire en peinture, un arbre, un nuage, un reflet.
Par quoi nous voilà immobiles, en quelque sorte, à la seconde
puissance ; car nous savons bien que le mouvement est un adieu à
l’apparence et à soi, mais plutôt une sorte d’hymne à ce monde
solide, et un massacre des apparences.
Un arc de triomphe est peut-être l’objet le plus éloquent qui soit.
Ce n’est pourtant qu’une porte de ville, et séparée des murs. Le petit
arc du Carrousel est posé sur cette place comme un signe ; on voit
d’autres choses par l’ouverture ; ce n’est qu’un passage ; mais il faut
passer. Entrer et sortir, ce n’est qu’un. Ainsi s’éveille le pas militaire ;
ainsi, par cette porte qui n’est que porte, l’entreprise qui ne promet
rien, ce qui donne vie au grenadier de pierre. Il attend de partir. Et
au-dessous, les ombres sur le sable stérile font oubli et désert. Car,
par la vertu de ce monument, qui signifie absolument l’en-dehors de
soi, il y faut passer, mais on n’y peut rester.
XIV
IDOLES
L’esprit dans la chose, voilà le dieu. Une horloge en ses rouages

et accrochages me raconte l’idée de l’horloger ; mais il n’y a point de
merveilleux là-dedans ; chaque roue ne dit qu’une chose. Au lieu
que la Joconde en dit bien plus que le peintre ne savait. Une belle
statue signifie sans fin ; les arceaux d’un cloître ont des milliers
d’aspects, tous parents de nous-même. Un quatuor de Beethoven
prend plus de sens d’année en année. Toutes ces œuvres, outre
l’immense pensée qui leur est propre, et qui nous dépasse toujours,
renvoient aussi tout ce culte et tous ces hommages qu’elles ont
reçus, comme ces autels plus vénérables par les couronnes. Le
temps n’épuisera point cet avenir de gloire. J’ai lu l’Iliade une fois de
plus ; c’est comme si j’avais apporté encore une pierre à ce grand
tombeau.
Quand le sauvage eut ébauché des tronçons basaltiques selon la
forme humaine, il ne put juger son œuvre ; mais au contraire c’est lui
qui fut jugé. Ces yeux de pierre furent plus forts que lui. Cette
immobile armée le tint en respect mieux qu’un despote ; car un
despote change d’attitude et de lieu et désire enfin quelque chose ;
mais les statues n’ont pas besoin de nous, ni de rien. Ainsi la statue
fut un dieu. Je dois appeler prière cette méditation devant le signe,
cette offrande qui est due, et dont le dieu n’a pas besoin, ce muet
dialogue où, d’un côté, toutes les réponses sont faites d’avance, et
toutes les demandes d’avance devinées. Ainsi la pensée sait où elle
va, et le vrai se montre dans l’immobile.
On voudrait dire que l’homme a fait des idoles parce qu’il était
religieux ; c’est comme si l’on disait qu’il a fait des outils parce qu’il
était savant ; mais au contraire la science n’est que l’observation des
outils et du travail par les outils. De même je dirais plutôt que la
première contemplation eut pour objet l’idole, et que l’homme fut
religieux parce qu’il fit des idoles. Il fallait rendre compte de cette
puissance du signe, et inventer la mythologie pour expliquer le beau.
L’Imitation de Jésus-Christ n’est que la traduction abstraite de cette
imitation du signe, qui est cérémonie. La réflexion sur l’idole arrive à
nier l’idole, par les perfections mêmes que l’on y devine ; mais c’est
déjà impiété. L’Iconoclaste doit se trouver sans dieu finalement. De
ce côté est la perfection sans objet ; ce néant nous renvoie à l’idole,
objet alors d’une adoration purifiée ; tel est l’art en notre temps,
moment dépassé et conservé, comme dit Hegel.
Les moyens de ce penseur, qui avance toujours par position,
négation et solution, seraient donc les instruments de l’histoire. Ceux
qui ont méprisé trop vite cette dialectique devraient bien considérer
que Comte, qui la méconnut aussi, est pourtant arrivé à faire
entendre, par d’autres mots, les mêmes relations. Car selon ses
vues, chaque jour mieux vérifiées, l’ancien fétichisme est bien la
religion essentielle, tandis que la religion pensée et purifiée n’est que
la négation de la religion, qui, sous le nom de théologie et de
métaphysique, tire le dieu hors du signe, et même hors du temple,
lui-même signe, et nous jette dans l’infini sans matière, d’où nous
devons aussitôt revenir, C’est alors que, selon l’esprit positif, l’ancien
fétichisme, sous le nom de contemplation esthétique, doit orner
l’existence coopérative, qui est elle-même négation de négation.

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Reflections on Irish Criminology:

Conversations with Criminology 1st

Island Criminology 1st Edition John Scott

LooseLeaf for Criminology 9th Edition

Criminology 9th Edition, (Ebook PDF)

Criminology (Ninth Edition) Freda Adler

A Southern African Perspective on Fundamental

Criminology of Serial Poisoners 1st ed. Edition Michael

Green Criminology and the Law 1st Edition James Gacek

Murdering Animals: Writings on Theriocide, Homicide and

Orla Lynch · Yasmine Ahmed

Helen Russell Kevin Hosford

ISBN 978-3-030-60592-6 ISBN 978-3-030-60593-3 (eBook)

Cover illustration: Contributor: Zoonar GmbH/Alamy Stock Photo

1 Criminology in Ireland, the Rise of a Discipline 1

2 In Conversation with Prof. Ian O’Donnell 11

3 A Conversation with Dr Deirdre Healy 27

4 In Conversation with Prof. Claire Hamilton 41

5 In Conversation with Dr Jennifer O’Mahoney 55

6 In Conversation with Dr Cheryl Lawther 67

7 In Conversation with Prof. Shane Kilcommins 81

8 In Conversation with Prof. Mary Rogan 95

9 In Conversation with Dr Diarmuid Griffin 109

10 In Conversation with Prof. Maggie O’Neill 123

11 In Conversation with Prof. Shadd Maruna 139

Dr. Orla Lynch is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Asc. Dean of

Yasmine Ahmed is a Ph.D. researcher and tutor at University College

Helen Russell holds a B.Sc. Government and an M.A. Criminology

Kevin Hosford is a Ph.D. Candidate and tutor in the Department of

and motivational dimensions of internet-based activism, understandings

Criminology in Ireland, the Rise of a Discipline

Abstract The rise and rise of criminology in Ireland cannot be under-

Keywords Discipline · Criminology · Absentee · Ireland · Boundaries

The uniqueness of Irish criminology is best summed up by reference

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

References to Ireland, even when it is to ordinary crime, are best to begin

contributions by Irish authors.1 However, given where we started from,

of academic programmes being offered in both Queens University and

Situating Irish Criminology

and research funding have all had an impact on how we do criminolog-

the pioneering use of permanent paid magistrates or centralised public

General of the Irish Prison Service is a board member of Europris. Inter-

Conversations with Criminologists

Maruna, S., & McEvoy, S. (2015). Afterword; Why Irish criminology. In D.

In Conversation with Prof. Ian O’Donnell

Keywords Psychology · Institute · Cambridge · Imprisonment ·

In tracing the origins and evolution of the discipline of criminology in

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 11

O’Donnell. Occupying the first named criminology post in the country,

Situating Your Research

Most Influential Work

by it and if they have a pre-existing mental health problem the damage

other countries, which is what we have tended to do, to think in a really

student. The Department of Justice is going to have to think along the

O’Donnell, I. (2004). Imprisonment and penal policy in Ireland. Howard

A Conversation with Dr Deirdre Healy

Keywords Probation · Practice · Desistance · Voice · Hibernian

In the discipline of criminology, given its theoretical origins in sociology

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 27

Suggested Readings from Prof. Healy

The Path to an Academic Life

people’s experiences, and to help give them a voice to a certain extent.

Contributions to the Field