Murder Cases on The Up in Ireland

by coffeeadict in Crime, January 20, 2011

A brief look into the crime statistics of Ireland shows a surprising development.

When analysing the annual crime figures published by Central Statistics Office Ireland, some surprising developments become apparent. First, there is the number of all homicide offences per Statistics. The trends show that offences resulting in the death of people increased year by year until 2007, where they reached a peak, and are on the decrease ever since. Hence, you could conclude, that the number of incidents where people are killed, is getting better.

Source: Central Statistics Office Ireland.

But as soon as you look into more detail, you can recognise that the number of manslaughter incidents has decreased and reached a quarter of the 2004 value in 2009, whilst the number of murder cases, or killings so to speak, has increased dramatically until 2007, coinciding with the peak in homicides.

Image via Celebrity Seats Blog.

When everybody thought that the decreasing number of crimes in 2008 would result in a decrease of murders as well, predicted wrong. From 2008, this figure is on the up again.

On the other hand, the number of dangerous driving incidents is reason for a rather pleasant surprise. Although still bad enough, it continuously decreased year after year, and was almost halved in 2009 compared with 2004.

What are the conclusions? The radio and TV ads campaigns against the “drink & drive” mentality as well as against “dangerous driving” have definitely paid off and shows results, as the traffic fatalities due to dangerous driving have been reduced dramatically.