There are times when working in criminal justice requires us to hold together things that do not always sit comfortably alongside one another. I have been thinking about that a lot while reading the contributions to this edition of the Bulletin, and particularly over this past week.
As I write, Ireland is dealing with the aftermath of a horrific collision on the M9 motorway in Co. Kildare. At approximately 3.00 a.m. on Sunday, 16 August 2026, five teenage boys lost their lives when the car in which they were travelling, which was being driven the wrong way along the motorway, collided head-on with another vehicle. In the other vehicle were three sisters and a seven-year-old boy, traveling towards Dublin Airport. They were all seriously injured. There has been considerable reporting about the possible role of social media, including suggestions that dangerous driving of this kind may be filmed or shared online. At the time of writing, however, I am conscious that many of the details surrounding this particular incident remain unconfirmed. The circumstances have understandably generated considerable public discussion, including commentary from An Garda Síochána, Ireland’s national police service, politicians and the media.
This tragic incident has made me think about something close to home for many of us who have spent our careers in criminal justice. We can have a longstanding professional commitment to rehabilitation and still find ourselves identifying very strongly with those who have been harmed. At certain times in our lives that identification can become particularly immediate. I am a parent. I am one of three sisters. I travel those roads. I have made early morning journeys to airports with my own family. It is difficult to read about what happened without imagining the fear of the people traveling in the other car.
My reaction does not change what I believe professionally, but it does remind me that those of us working in rehabilitation remain members of the communities our criminal justice systems are there to serve. We are parents, partners, siblings, friends and sometimes victims ourselves. Our professional knowledge does not remove the ordinary human reactions we have to serious harm. Compassion and anger are not mutually exclusive. Understanding developmental adversity does not erase agency or harm. Rehabilitation does not require emotional detachment from victims. We can recognise the suffering caused by harmful behaviour, understand the wish for accountability and still believe that people are capable of change. Tragically, those five teenager boys no longer have any opportunity to change. They leave behind five grieving families to deal with their loss amid considerable public anger, some of which has played out very harshly on social media, while another family deals with the devastating consequences of the collision.
It is against this backdrop that I found myself reading the contributions to this Bulletin. Taken together, the contributions’ common theme is the need to respond to the person and the risk in front of us while also looking beyond the immediate situation. Someone can present a serious risk today and still live differently in the future. We cannot predict the future but we work with the evidence available to us, manage risk as carefully as we can and try to create the conditions in which a safer future is more likely.
Simone Shaw’s Changing Trajectories considers work with young adults in the Ripley Unit in Corrections Victoria. Her discussion of continuing development in young adulthood, and particularly the importance of identity, relationships, competence and hope, reminds us that the person we encounter at one point in their life may still have considerable capacity to change.
Shadd Maruna touches on something similar from a desistance perspective. He reminds us to look beyond the institutionalised person in front of us and consider the person they may eventually become.
Sharen Barboza and Maria Masotta’s contribution on suicide watch approaches this from a different direction. Their focus on balancing immediate safety and containment with therapeutic engagement reminds us that responding to the immediate crisis and thinking about what may help someone move beyond it can sit alongside one another.
Working in criminal justice rehabilitation demands that we hold particular tensions. People can experience harm and cause harm to others. They can be responsible for harm and still have the capacity for a different future. We can (and should) take the experiences of victims very seriously while continuing the work of reducing future risk with those who have offended. For me, this is where rehabilitation and public protection truly comes together.
Our commitment to rehabilitation does not make us immune to fear, anger or identification with those who have been harmed. At different points in our lives, and in response to different events, one perspective may come much closer to home than another. The M9 collision has brought that tension particularly close for me. I can identify strongly with the family traveling along that motorway to the airport and feel deeply for what they and their families are experiencing, while remaining committed to the principles of development, rehabilitation and human change that have shaped my career. Both can be true at the same time.
In the days following the collision, I found Irish Senator Lynn Ruane’s comments helpful and grounding. She has worked extensively with young people in challenging circumstances and has a longstanding background in community work and advocacy. In The Irish Times newspaper she is quoted as saying:
“It begins by knowing our young people, understanding the communities they are growing up in and investing in relationships, trusted adults, families, education, mental health, community development and opportunities that give young people a genuine sense of purpose and belonging.” More on this in our next edition…..
Her next point probably comes closest to what I have been trying to work through in writing this piece:
“We can be clear about the harm caused but if we dehumanise young people or use disparaging terms rather than doing the harder work of understanding the ‘why’, we fail everybody.”
That, for me, is the balance. If There will inevitably be times when one side of that balance feels closer to us than the other. Perhaps simply acknowledging that is part of remaining human in this work.
Dr Emma Regan
President, IACFP
August 2026
