The majority of those sentenced under mandatory minimum 10-year laws for drug dealing are “drug mules rather than high-level drug barons”, according to the State’s legal advisory body.
The Law Reform Commission said that while the motives behind the laws were “understandable”, they had not acted as a deterrent and had led to “inconsistent and disproportionate sentencing”.
In its Mandatory Sentences report, the commission calls for the presumptive mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years for dealing drugs worth over €13,000 to be repealed.
“It has been observed that the majority of those being sentenced under the presumptive sentencing regime are low-level drug mules rather than high-level drug barons,” it said.
It said the result of the act was that “expendable couriers” were used by gangs to hold and store drugs. It said these were “generally vulnerable and desperate people”, often drug addicts who were exploited “rather than hardened criminals”.
It said the law was unlikely to deter these people nor reduce the overall level of criminality given there was a “virtually limitless pool” of people to do the job.
Source: Cormac O'Keeffe, Irish Examiner, 11/06/13
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