Selling Crime in Ireland

When asked about stopping crime Fine Gael seem to be one of the main advocates of harsher measures. They want to be the ones tough on crime and the stunt and lets be honest it was a stunt of putting the Army on the street is the ace in tough crime measures. People imagine that a few army lads will match the gangland gangs for firepower and curb our monumental crime rate. Thing is I doubt it would stop crime and our monumental crime rate is internationally tiny. While many of the ideas that will stop crime are not thought of. For instance in a paper the Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime by Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago and John Donohue of Yale University

We offer evidence that legalized abortion has contributed significantly to recent crime reductions. Crime began to fall roughly 18 years after abortion legalization. The 5 states that allowed abortion in 1970 experienced declines earlier than the rest of the nation, which legalized in 1973 with Roe v. Wade. States with high abortion rates in the 1970s and 1980s experienced greater crime reductions in the 1990s. In high abortion states, only arrests of those born after abortion legalization fall relative to low abortion states. Legalized abortion appears to account for as much as 50 percent of the recent drop in crime

Something tells me that Fine Gael are not going to advocate Abortion as a measure the fight crime any time soon.

But what we do get from Fine Gael and indeed most people in the country is Garda on the beat. Indeed the army on the street is simply the extreme version of this argument. Basically the theory goes if the police or on the street people don’t do stuff. Thing is this is not true.

George L Kelling Professor at Rutgers University, a Research Fellow at Harvard University, and an Adjunct Fellow at the Manhattan Institute believes that increased patroling does little to reduce crime and in fact becomes aggressive patrolling targetting male youth’s often from minority backgrounds. He was involved in two experiments the Newark Foot patrol experiment and the Kansas city patrol experiment. The difference being, Newark reduced fear of crime and involved walking while Kansas was not really noticed and involved marked patrol cars. The similarity was that neither reduced crime.

Remember when you were in school did the presence of the teacher stop you swapping notes? When they looked at you yes, but when they were on the other side of the classroom you passed the notes anyway. Same too with the Gardai. People wouldn’t mug an old lady when a Garda is on the same street but once the Garda is around the corner then the old lady is still in danger. But the fact that the old lady saw the Garda makes her feel safer, even if 5 minutes later she is mugged. What actually reduces crime is Gardaí catching criminals and putting them away. Not just harsher sentences but the actual catching is what matters. Sweden has the lowest imprisonment rate In Europe and one of the most socially democrat nations in the EU and it also has the highest crime rate in the EU (See below). So going by Sweden the correlation between inequality and crime is not what he left think it is but the imprisonment rate and crime rate is what the right think.

But the Newark system was interesting in that it made people feel safer. Because it tackled issues like graffiti and prostitution. Issues that people in neighbourhoods felt made the area less safe. In many ways it was similar to the zero tolerance measures that were taken in New York. A similar result was found in Houston’s Citizen Patrol Program. Which basically involved as the name suggests citizen’s patrolling. How more patrols work is not by stopping crime but by basically putting a presence on the street to stop the likes of loitering. Things that are treating but not specially illegal. Anti-social as they call it. This does not need to be done with trained police officers as the Houston program showed.

Many places are actually moving away from having officers on patrol preferring reservists to do the job. As it is the sight of the uniform as much as anything that does the job that it can do. While trained officers are better used investigating crimes and actually trying to reduce the crime rate. Of course this might just mean the Michael McDowell’s idea of a Garda reserve was good. But of course you can’t say that in this day and age. Maybe he sold it wrong if he said this would let the Garda away from the mundane maybe he would have more support.

Fear of crime is massive in Ireland. A while back the Sunday Times ran an article saying

IRISH people are more likely to be victims of crime than any other country in the EU — according to a new European commission study.

This looks quiet amazing and seems to confirm the idea that gangland is gone crazy in Ireland. But if you look at the actual crime statistics crime in Ireland is one of the lowest in Europe Crime stats are quiet hard to find and I haven;t the time to look for more upto date data then 2003 but as you can see we are down towards the bottom. So how do we have nearly 5 times less crime then Sweden but actually think we have more crime. (remember having the youngest population in Europe means the highest proportion of people in crime committing range. )

Also before anyone wants to point out that we in Ireland don’t report crime. Lets look at the statistics for the one not un-reportable crime Homicide.

I have no figures for Sweden from 2003 but had about 3 per 100,000 in 2006 or about 300% our rate in 2003. But as you can see we have the lowest in the EU only Iceland has less in what I guess is the developed nations group of Europe.

Yet still the stories of high crime go on and on. The media sensationalise the size of gangland, parties talk up the crime rate and make people afraid. The power of nightmares was a UK documentary that talked about the Neo-cons talking up terrorism to give themselves power, making people afraid of something that really was minor. The exact same thing is happening in Ireland. Crime is low and talk of Garda on the beat is just that it is talk it is not a solution. As shown by the Newark Survey this is not going to happen. But what about the Newark studies other finding that it reduces the fear of crime. Is that good enough.

Is it good enough for a party to deliver us from a fear that they had a big hand in actually creating?

Fine Gael are not going to advocate a policy of abortion to fight crime instead they are going to advocate a policy of Gardai on the beat. Why because they are sales people abortion as a crime fighting measure is not going to sell, but making people feel afraid then offering them the guiding hand out of this fear does sell. Politicians are salespersons not solution providers.

The army on the street is a crap solution to a small problem but by god is it a great sales pitch.