Crime in Ireland

Ireland prior to 1960s was mostly an agrarian society. Ireland was made up of small, widely dispersed rural farm communities. These communities were strongly patriarchal with strict restrictions of a conservative moral social control system. These small communities were also very strongly under the influence of a very authoritarian Catholic Church. The fairly wide distribution of diminutive population concentrations and very limiting cultural precincts of acceptable behavior were not conducive to deviant behavior. The rural Irish Agrarian society was not a fertile environment for criminal behavior.

Demographic changes that came about in the early 1960’s favored an increase in crime. Industrialization and the ensuing urbanization generated a shift in populations, wealth and moral pyridines. Following Industrialization in the 1960s, urbanization diluted the impact of the urban communities and the influence of the Catholic Church. The combinations of population shifts and economic shifts in both poverty and prosperity created shifts in the type of crimes, victims and perpetrators.

A consideration of whether or not Ireland is in a” Crime Crisis” should include the possibility that the “Fear of Crime” is in fact on the upswing. Using the Garda Siochana Annual report on Crime to follow statistical changes in various types and numbers of crimes allows us a position to start. It may be an oversimplification to engage the black and white raw data as more than a piece of the crime puzzle. Interpretations of such data invite miscalculations by not including considerations of issues not as clinical as crime statistics. We will deal with a few momentarily.

An analysis of indictable crimes in Ireland since 1950 offers us a starting point to compare relative raw data.  A year to year gives us a simple, black and white statistical analysis of changes in crime rates.  Starting in 1950 we find The Garda list of indictable crimes at a 12,231. In 1960 the figure climbed to 15,375 and jumping ahead to 2006 to 103,710.These numbers must be considered in light of populations. The recorded population of 1841 (before the Great Famine) was 6.5 million. In 1950 Ireland had a population of about 3 million by 1960 it had eroded to approximately 2.8 million. 2002 census indicated a population of 4.2 million showing little change by 2006 at 4.25 million. The 2008 population of Ireland is shown to be 6.1 million.

 Comparing the crime figures offered by the Garda’s annual report along with the population numbers from the Irish Central Statistics Office, we begin to see that indictable crime numbers have increased a relatively small amount. When population considerations are applied to these comparisons we find the numbers do not hand and glove.  A 1950 indictable crime number of 12,231 within a population of 3 million compared to is .04% (crimes divided by population). Using the Garda figures for indictable crimes in 1960 of 15,375 within a population of 2.8 million represents a .055%, a substantial increase mainly due to a drop in population in Ireland during the decade considered. Jumping ahead to 2006, the Garda reports 103,710 headline crimes within a population of 4.24 million for substantial increase to 2.4%. The population during the period from 1960 to 2006 increased 51 percent. The variance of crime is nearly seven times greater (2006 crimes divided by 1960 crimes). Understand that these numbers are indeed spread across four decades. The largest increases were prior to 1995. For the most part these numbers do not tell the whole story.