The Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by a child who sought to be considered for enhanced remission from a sentence of detention at Oberstown Children Detention Campus. The Court rejected his claim that the Constitution required children in detention to have access to the enhanced remission scheme available to adult prisoners.
The appellant, identified in the judgment as B., had pleaded guilty to robbery and was sentenced by Dublin Circuit Criminal Court in November 2017 to three years’ detention. The sentence was backdated to May 23, 2017, with the final 20 months suspended. After the standard one-quarter remission applied to children following an earlier High Court ruling, his custodial detention was due to end on May 23, 2018.
In January 2018, his solicitor asked that he be considered for enhanced remission. The request was refused. The appellant argued that excluding children from the adult scheme breached the constitutional guarantee of equality before the law and that he had been detained under a detention and supervision order under section 151 of the Children Act 2001.
The Supreme Court said the sentence did not accord with the provisions of the 2001 Act if a Court of Appeal decision on children’s suspended sentences was correct. But it said nothing turned on that issue: the appellant had not challenged the sentence’s validity and could not now complain that most of it had been suspended. The Court did not decide that his sentence was made under section 151.
On equality, the Court said the claim depended on comparing the children’s detention regime with the adult prison regime. It found the statutory distinction between children and adults had not been shown to be factually incorrect or unfair in principle. Children’s detention uses incremental incentives, including mobility trips and home leave, as part of an individual plan aimed at reintegration. The evidence was too sparse to support the appellant’s proposed comparison, and no evidence undermined the rationale for the children’s regime.
The Court did not accept the High Court judge’s view that enhanced remission would necessarily conflict with planned release. Justice O’Malley said future regulations could include enhanced remission if it were considered beneficial within the statutory framework. However, the appeal concerned a request to be included in an adult statutory scheme, and the separation-of-powers issues raised by that request had not been addressed. The Court dismissed the appeal.