Criminal Justice Culture(s) in Ireland: Quo Vadis?*

Employing culture as a lens through which to examine the Irish criminal justice system, this paper reflects on recent developments within key criminal justice agencies with a view to where we may be headed in the near future. Four traits common to criminal justice in Ireland, perhaps paralleling cultural patterns in Irish society more broadly, are identified: the use of discretion; a disjuncture between policy and practice; the primacy of agency; and humanitarianism. Given the unprecedented level of scrutiny brought to bear on the key agencies of our criminal justice system in the past five to seven years, and a growing body of research in a post-colonial vein, the paper argues that we have become increasingly self-aware as a criminal justice system, as well as more reflexive as regards our relationship with other states. Indeed, recent critical scrutiny of organisational cultures in our police and prison services and the Department of Justice has perhaps resulted in a new receptiveness to change and to European influences. Despite this pressure towards convergence, we should not forget that local actors are always responsible for implementation of criminal justice ‘on the ground’, thus bringing national cultural traits back into focus. Paradoxically, one of the effects of these pressures towards convergence may be to force a deeper understanding of Irish criminal justice culture and the ‘recovery’, as Brangan (2019) has argued, of its core assumptions, values and fundamentals