Criminological Others: An Inquiry into the Construction and Legal Standing of Suspects with Intellectual Disabilities in Ireland

Abstract Irish policymakers have evinced a distinct willingness in recent years to reconstruct pre-trial and trial practices in order to demonstrate an increased sensitivity for the needs and concerns of victims of crime with intellectual disabilities. However, the same cannot be said for suspects with intellectual disabilities who remain subject to an unrevised custodial framework that is almost four decades old. In an effort to appraise this framework through the lens of Nils Christie’s ‘not-so-ideal offender’ abstraction, this article surveys a number of discrete sites within Ireland’s pre-trial landscape where a tension is arguably apparent between mainstream criminal procedure, on the one hand, and the ontological realities of intellectual impairment, on the other. Through this analysis the article highlights the need to reconstruct suspect identities at a policy and procedural level and, in doing so, makes the case for greater legislative activism with regard to the procedural treatment of suspects with intellectual disabilities.