New Research into Sentencing & Relationship Violence


Arc Mediation is delighted to be a research partner with South East Technological University, who have recently been awarded the tender by the Judicial Council’s Sentencing Information and Guidelines Committee, ‘SCIG’, for a confidential research project.

The research project titled ‘Study of District Court Judges’ views on Sentencing & Relationship Violence’ forms part of the ongoing work of SGIC, who identified sentencing in the District Court as an area in need of study. The experienced SETU research team includes Senior Law lecturer and Lead Researcher Dr Niamh Maguire, along with legal academics Dr Sinead Conneely and Dr Róisín O’Shea of Arc Mediation.

The research team has extensive experience and expertise in Sentencing Research, Family Law and Empirical Research in the Courts. Dr Niamh Maguire has previously carried out empirical sentencing research in the District and Circuit Court, on pre-sentence reports in the Irish criminal justice system and on a breach processes in comparative contexts. Dr Sinead Conneely and Dr Róisín O’Shea, consulting researchers, are experienced empirical legal researchers who recently conducted a multi-year empirical family law and domestic violence research project in the Irish District Court from March 2017 – April 2019 which led to a series of 5 publications (2019-2021) in the Irish Journal of Family law.