Overview: The defiant gesture of Liam Keane following the collapse of his trial for murder enraged the public, giving rise to claims from the media and opposition politicians that we are in the midst of a "crime crisis", writes Carol Coulter.
It is certainly serious that a murder trial cannot proceed because witnesses who previously gave statements to gardaí cannot recall the contents of these statements in court.
The number of gang-related killings is also very worrying, as is the fact that eight years after the murder of Veronica Guerin, and the introduction of a raft of anti-crime measures, criminal gangs still operate undeterred in our major cities.
But does this amount to a "crisis"? Headlines generated by shocking incidents, often involving young urban males, sometimes feed a frenzy of outrage that hinders a serious debate about crime.
The truth is that crime in Ireland is not increasing, but has been fluctuating around the same level for the past decade.
In 1994 the number of indictable crimes (triable by judge and jury) rose above 100,000 for the first time, and stayed at this level until 1997, when it fell by 10,000. This fall continued for the next two years, so that just over 80,000 such crimes were recorded in 1999.
A sharp jump was recorded in 2001, much of which can be attributed to different recording methods, but the figures have been declining again, with a drop of 9 per cent between the year ending October this year and the same period last year.
When set against a real increase in population during that decade of close to half a million, there has been a real fall in indictable crime.
Comparisons are not wholly reliable, as the only source for crime statistics are Garda statistics, and the Garda method of recording crime altered in 2001, with the introduction of the computerised PULSE system.
Eventually this system should lead to more accurate figures, but it produced an apparent leap in crime figures for that year.
The Garda statistics only show crimes reported to the gardaí. Certain crimes, like vehicle theft, are more likely to be reported than others, like sexual assault.
They also only show the crimes where the Garda is the prosecuting authority.
Various crimes, like tax evasion and breaches of health and safety legislation, are prosecuted by the Revenue Commissioners and the Health and Safety Authority.
Nonetheless, the Garda statistics do provide very useful information on trends, and the Department of Justice has committed itself to regular crime victimisation surveys, similar to those in other European countries, which measure people's own experience of crime. This will help in completing the picture.
A comparison with crime statistics in other countries suggests Ireland is a low crime society.
In a survey of crime rates in 29 countries for 1998, published by the National Crime Council, Ireland is fourth from the bottom, with only Spain, Russia and Japan recording fewer crimes per head of population. Russia is likely to owe its position in this table to lack of reporting rather than lack of crime.
In relation to homicides, Ireland was eighth from the bottom, despite the ongoing problem of gang-related killings.
Also, Ireland is not an under-policed society. According to figures compiled by the British Home Office, Ireland has 308 police for every 100,000 people, placing it seventh in a list of 16 European countries.
When the number of police is compared to the number of indictable crimes, Ireland has one of the highest proportions of police in Europe, with 136 gardaí for every 1,000 indictable crimes, second only to Spain.
England and Wales have only 23 police for every 1,000 indictable crimes. If the gardaí need more resources, what does it say about the level of policing of our neighbour?
If the gardaí are unable to police certain areas adequately, or devote the resources necessary to certain categories of crime, it raises the question of the prioritisation of their resources. Questions need to be asked about the time members of the force spend on activities like serving summonses, signing passport applications and issuing firearms certificates.
But the issue is much wider than that of Garda resources. One of the most striking things about the dozens of reports on crime that have been generated over the past decade is their unanimity on the causes of crime, and on measures needed to prevent it.
Whether these reports come from the Forum on Crime, the National Crime Council or the Department of Justice itself, they all point out that crime is generated by poverty, poor social supports and social exclusion, and urge intervention with children and families. The response of successive governments has been pilot projects and short-lived "initiatives". There has been no concerted policy, no joined-up thinking, no strategy spanning the different departments involved.
The price paid for this is the production of a layer of disenchanted and alienated youth with no stake in society, bombarded with images of consumer goods on the one hand and violence on the other.
This is the layer from which much of the publicised crime comes, and which produces those that go on to more organised and professional crime. Many of these were pre-teenagers when the first of these reports were being written.
Meanwhile, "white collar" crime receives little or no attention from either the media or the law-enforcing authorities.
Hundreds of millions of euro have been lost to the Exchequer through tax evasion, money that could be used to expand educational opportunities in economically disadvantaged areas. Yet prosecutions are rare and the penalties are normally financial.
Similarly there a few prosecutions for fraud as many institutions prefer to deal with it quietly through dismissing the perpetrator and seeking restitution.
All of this affects the authority of the criminal justice system, which is perceived in many areas as harsh on working class crime while forgiving the crimes of the middle classes.
Is it surprising that people who see friends jailed for years for snatching a handbag, while those who steal millions from the tax-payer go free, are not enthusiastic about co-operating with the system?