A case for PULSE being installed in probation offices was indirectly made in the District Court this week (November 11 ) after a judge made the extraordinarily rare move of criticising a probation officer for submitting an incomplete report on a defendant.
PULSE is the Garda intelligence gathering computer system, which has been in operation in the State for the last 10 years.
The situation came to light in the case of Marcella Lynch (31 ), Fairgreen, Mountmellick, Co Laois but formerly of Woodlands Grove, Athlone.
Lynch was in court for the presentation of her probation report, ordered at a previous appearance after she pleaded guilty to the theft of four plasma televisions worth €1,296 from an address in Woodlands Grove on November 6, 2008, and possession with intent to supply a quantity of heroin in Moate on the same date.
However, Judge John Neilan noted a contradiction amongst the documents before him and pointed this out to the court.
It transpired the recommendation to the court of the named probation officer was to give Lynch “the most lenient sentence possible”, without the officer having taken into account a number of recent alleged drugs offences against the defendant from the Portlaoise district.
The judge remanded Lynch on continuing bail until March 3 for an updated report and recommended “this officer no longer deal with this client”.
However, according to Gardai, the new charges against Lynch have not yet been fully finalised, as the DPP in Laois has yet to decide how many counts and what to charge Lynch with in this instance.
The expectation of the system is that the probation officer regularly contacts the Gardai in a defendant’s districts for updates on behaviour and Judge Neilan was disappointed this did not happen in this case.
“It’s a case of one arm of the State not talking to another arm,” suggested one of the officials involved in the case.
PULSE stands for Police Using Leading Systems Effectively and carries all information, both intelligence and evidence, of all persons whose details have been input.
All Garda stations then have access to all this information to hand at all times.
Such a terminal in the 60 or so probation offices around the State would take a little weight off the Gardai and save the occasional probation officer from a judge’s wrath.
