Statistics can be misleading, and nowhere more so than in an area as complex as crime. The recently published provisional quarterly figures from the Garda Síochána should, therefore, be treated with some caution.
As was pointed out yesterday by Fine Gael, the average figures they contain disguise great regional variation, with crime levels higher in Dublin than elsewhere in the State, and with great variation also within the Dublin area. Predictably, the number of crimes reported to the Garda Síochána in Dublin city centre are more than 10 times higher than the national average.
But the crime statistics themselves can also be misleading. In absolute terms, the total volume of "headline" crimes is dominated by various forms of theft, with these accounting for 38,395 out of 48,708 of the total crimes reported to the Garda Síochána in the first half of this year. This mirrors the figures for last year, with thefts and burglaries again accounting for almost 80 per cent of all reported crime. A fluctuation in these figures can produce a rise or dip in the overall statistics.
Murder and manslaughter, on the other hand, account for a tiny fraction of the total figures, with 26 such crimes in the first half of this year, and 23 in the same period in 2004. Sexual crimes, while devastating for the victims, account for less than 2 per cent of all reported crime each year. The taking of another person's life is the most heinous crime, and gangland killings, where people are gunned down often before their families or friends, are deeply shocking. The fact remains, however, that the homicide rate in Ireland is still one of the lowest in Europe.
The "headline" crime statistics produced at intervals by the Garda Síochána do not register some crimes at all. The possession of a knife is not a "headline" crime, unlike the possession of a gun. Fraud, revenue and public order offences, which might do greater social damage than, for example, the "headline" crime of the theft of a bicycle, are not registered either.
The method used by the Garda Síochána in collecting statistics has also changed in recent years, with the coming on stream of the Pulse system. This gave rise to an apparent significant increase in crime in 2001, which was not replicated in later years and is almost certainly explicable by the change in the system. The reliability of the Garda statistics themselves have also been questioned by experts, including members of the Department of Justices's Expert Group on Crime Statistics. All in all, the debate on crime levels and the appropriate responses to them must be rooted in solid, evidence-based research.