THE crime rate in the Republic is about 60 per cent that in Northern Ireland, according to a new study of crime in Ireland.
The study says that when population size in both parts of the island is taken into account the level of serious crime in the North has increased by almost 10 times since 1945, compared with a five fold increase in the Republic.
According to the authors, the crime rate in Ireland remains low compared to other countries.
The study was prepared for the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, a group which has meetings in Dublin and Belfast for discussion of economic and social developments among "the decision makers in the business, public service, trade union, and the academic and research communities".
The research was led by Prof John Brewer of the sociology and, social policy department of Queen's University Belfast, and presented to the society at a meeting in Dublin last night.
The study indicates that between 1945 and 1960 both parts of the island had similar levels of indictable (or serious) crime, but from then the North had a consistently higher rate. The divergence was clearly evident by the 1960s, and is not wholly attributable to the "Troubles" which began at the end of the decade according to the study.
Comparing types of crime, the study found that the rate of robberies per capita in the Republic since 1980 has been running at about half the rate in Northern Ireland - and sometimes only a quarter. Both parts of the island have had variable murder rates but in the North "excluding terrorism, there appears to be a background increase in all types of murder from 1970 onwards".
The report notes the comparatively high level of crime in Dublin, which accounts for about a third of the population of the State but between half and two thirds of crime.
The report also includes an "ethnographic" account of crime in Belfast which attempts to reproduce the city's sectarian divide by analysing views of crime in largely Protestant east Belfast and largely Catholic west Belfast.
The "ethnographic" data are based on interviews with people rather than official statistics. This is meant to more closely reflect people's experiences of crime, and make up for some of the shortcomings of official data.
A majority in both areas of the city "thought that ordinary crime in their locality was real and not a product of moral panic or media hype". "Crime" was seen mainly as crime against property rather than the person - community definitions of crime tended to exclude domestic violence, child abuse and fraud, and "socially acceptable crimes such as social security fiddles".
The study found that there is under reporting of crime on a wide scale. One factor was fear of contacting the police - some people feared being seen as an informer by others in the community, others had an "ideological antipathy" to the RUC. There was also a feeling that the police and criminal justice system were ineffective, and "a sense that the police have lost control over the fight against crime and have given up," according to the authors.
The under reporting was found to be nearly as common in loyalist as in nationalist areas: "working class loyalists have as poor a relationship with the RUC as their equivalents in national areas".
Most respondents expressed fears for the future, based on concern that there would be an explosion of the drug problem and drug related crime.