Crime Lords by Paul Williams

This book names the names, and describes the deeds, of Irish gangsterdom. From ‘The General’ to ‘The Viper’, and from ‘Cotton Eye’ to the INLA, the gruesome beatings and agonizing deaths are set out in lurid detail.

A Garda report to Europol has recently said that there are 17 major organized crime gangs operating here. These gangs operate like businesses, seeking to protect and expand their markets, to collect their debts and to reinvest their profits. Many of the gang managers live in The Netherlands or in Spain, but their writ still runs on the streets of Dublin.

Amsterdam, it is claimed by this book, is the hub of organized crime in Western Europe. The Dutch police receive more requests for assistance in international criminal investigations than any other police force in the world. It is hardly coincidental that The Netherlands also has one of the most liberal drug consumption regimes in Europe.

Organised crime is a Europe-wide phenomenon, and it uses modern global communications to the full. It is surprising that the present Minister for Justice does not want to see the European Union given the right to take majority decisions on anti-crime measures, and that he wants all decisions taken by unanimity among all 25 E.U. countries.

Paul Williams’ book illustrates how the power of the gangs is used capriciously and for purposes that go beyond their ‘core business’. One eighteen year old, Paul Dempsey, was targetted because he had the nerve to got out with the younger sister of one of the “Westies”. Even minor road accidents involving gang members can escalate into bloody vendettas.

Witnesses withdrawing statements, and thereby aborting prosecutions, is not something new. The willingness of jurors to sit in cases involving major crime figures shows a strong and courageous public spirit. Jury trials can only be dispensed with, and gangland cases sent to the non-Jury Special Criminal Court, if the ‘ordinary courts are inadequate for the administration of criminal justice’. But this cannot be done, just because witnesses are willing to renege on their evidence.

Paul Williams’ book shows that the potential for intimidation of witnesses is enormous. And if witnesses can be intimidated, so too can jurors. Even Gardai and Prison Officres have been intimidated in their homes, so jurors must be vulnerable too.

Williams’ book tells a series of stories. It does not advocate any new policies or take on wider issues. It does not analyse the underlying causes of criminal behaviour – the disturbed families or the childhood abuse. Nor does it make comparisons between Ireland and other countries. 

The amount of gratuitous torture associated with Irish gangland killings deserves thought. The victims are going to die anyway. One would have thought that death alone would be a sufficient deterrent to whatever the killers want to discourage. But that does not seem to be enough for modern Irish gangs. Prolonged suffering prior to death is apparently needed too.

It is a pity that Paul Williams, a qualified criminologist as well as a courageous journalist, did not take the time to add a reflective chapter on wider questions like these.