Families hail ‘light at end of the tunnel’ as tougher sentencing Bill progresses

Families who have advocated for changes to criminal sentences in Northern Ireland have spoken of “light at the end of the tunnel” as long-awaited legislation came to the Stormont Assembly.

Justice Minister Naomi Long brought the Sentencing Bill to the chamber as families of Lisa Dorrian and Enda Dolan, who have campaigned for decades for reforms to the justice system, watched from the public gallery.

The wide-ranging reforms include a number of measures that aim to “strengthen and improve the existing framework” for sentencing for crimes, including raising the maximum sentence for causing death or serious injury by dangerous driving from 14 years to 20 years.

Peter Dolan, whose son Enda was 18 when he was killed by a drunk driver, said their decade-long campaign to increase sentences for dangerous driving “has been a rocky road”.

“We have got a wee bit of light at the end of the tunnel,” he said.

“It’s fantastic to get a good debate here today and we have heard from all the different parties and the positive comments from the parties that they’re in favour of what has been in the Bill.”

Ms Long said: “I recognised the pain that the Dolan family have felt and other families have felt when they’ve lost a loved one because of other people’s reckless conduct.

“I very much believe that the maximum sentence that was available did not reflect the seriousness of the crime, did not reflect the loss and the harm that it caused.”

The Bill also creates new starting points on sentences for murder – 15 years where no significant aggravating factors are present and 20 years for the most serious cases.

Joanne Dorrian, whose sister Lisa was 25 when she was last seen alive in 2005, also appeared alongside the Justice Minister.

The Bill will bring in “Charlotte’s Law?”, which aims to reduce the trauma experienced by families of murder victims in so-called “no body” cases by creating a statutory aggravator for failure to disclose the location of victims’ remains and new sentence reductions for post-sentence disclosures.

It will also introduce provisions equivalent to Helen’s Law in England and Wales, requiring parole commissioners to consider failure to disclose the location of victims’ remains in release decisions.

Ms Long said the department has worked with families “to look at staged interventions” to create “a series of incentives for someone who knows where the bodies are to give that information up to the families”.

“It is an awful thing to lose a child or a sibling or a friend, and it is a truly awful thing not to have anywhere you can go and actually spend time with them to mark those important anniversaries and those times when you just want to reflect on their life, that’s another harm being caused to families,” she said.

“It’s another trauma they’ve had to bear.”

Ms Dorrian said Charlotte’s law “really has the potential to change the lives of the families that are left behind”.

“It has the potential to find the girls and bring them back, and when we get a conviction for Lisa, we then hope that Charlotte’s law will allow the perpetrator to let us lay Lisa to rest,” she said.

The Sentencing Bill would introduce a statutory aggravator model for hate crimes amid record levels of racially motivated offences and creates a new offence of assaulting a person delivering a public service.

It will also make provision in Northern Ireland legislation for unduly lenient sentences; including a vulnerable victim aggravator, where the offender knows or ought reasonably to have known the victim was vulnerable; and introduce a discretionary life sentence for repeat offenders.

Speaking in the chamber, Ms Long acknowledged the Bill includes “some novel and unique provisions”.

She said: “I do not believe and have never believed that novel and unique should be weaknesses. Quite to the contrary, they are the purpose of devolution.

“Importantly, I believe that this Bill makes significant changes that will make a positive difference to the people we represent, and in particular to victims of crime, as well as improving confidence in the criminal justice system and increasing transparency and effectiveness of sentencing.”

DUP MLA Paul Frew, chairman of the Justice Committee, noted that many of the proposed measures “have been informed by and championed by victims and their families”, and those will “be of great interest to the public”.

He added that the committee have sought “information on the deterrence factor of longer sentencing and the potential impact of longer sentencing on the prison system”.

“This is particularly important as members have heard that the prison population is at an all-time high and the prison service is therefore under pressure,” he said.

“We are keen, therefore, to see the analysis that has been done on this Bill’s possible impact on the prison service and if it will potentially add to those existing unprecedented pressures.”

In her conclusion to the debate on Monday, Ms Long said: “We’ve seen today how much this does impact people in our community, how it actually affects people’s lives.

“What we do here is not just theatre and pantomime, it has to be important, and legislation is where the rubber hits the road.

“So, I think it’s taken too long to get to this point, but I’m glad that we are now here.”