The Garda's latest annual crime report contains some discrepancies caused by the introduction of a new computerised system for recording crime, writes Jim Cusack, Security Editor
Several Garda sources have indicated to The Irish Times that it is unlikely there was an apparently massive 131 per cent increase in assaults between 1999 and 2000. The claim was made in the Garda's annual report, issued last week.
Instead, senior sources say what occurred was that the introduction of a new system of recording crime accounted for the statistical abnormality.
What happened, it is said, is that the introduction of the new computerised information system, PULSE (the acronym for Police Using Leading Systems Efficiently), led to gardaí recording greater numbers of incidents, including assaults. Previously, under the manual system of writing accounts of assaults into logbooks, gardaí tended to under-report assaults. Only the most serious offences, usually where people received serious injuries, tended to be recorded in station logbooks, while routine fist fights or melees outside pubs were ignored.
Since the introduction of PULSE in September 1999, gardaí have had to record every incident to which they are called. While initially there was difficulty in inputting data on the system, it gradually became more efficient during 2000 - the period of the latest Garda report - and it is believed this new recording system led to the statistical effect recorded in the crime report for 2000.
Gardaí across the State say that while public order offences have become one of their main policing problems, this has been a growing trend over several years and there was no major upsurge in the problem during 2000.
It is also understood that as the PULSE system has come to be used more and more by gardaí that the figures inputted for 2001 will show even greater "increases" in a number of categories of crime where there was previously under-reporting.
According to one senior source, preliminary figures for crime in 2001 show increases of 1,000 per cent and more in certain categories, particularly public order offences and what are regarded as minor assaults.
Collating the information for the latest report, published a year late, was also beset with problems because of the transfer from the old manual log system to the new PULSE system.
The report also went to press with some mistakes. The recorded serious crimes for Limerick and Galway were mixed up. In the table "Headline Offences recorded and detected by Garda regions and the five principal city areas during 2000", Galway is shown as having eight homicides while Limerick has none when the opposite was the case.
One of the other problems encountered in assembling the information for the report was the introduction of new terms for types of crime. The old "indictable" category, which covered serious crime for which a defendant was entitled to be tried before a jury in the High Court, has been broadened and renamed "Headline" crimes.
However, despite this new nomenclature, the report basically reflects the fact that there has been a gradual increase in lawlessness in the State dating back from the early 1970s, when drugs and armed robbery began to increase.
There has been something of a reversal since the all-time high of 1996, when the annual report recorded more than 100,000 indictable (now headline) crimes to 73,000. Garda sources say this is due to a number of factors, including the effect of economic growth on the employment market and the simple fact that there are now twice as many prison places as there were in the mid-1990s so fewer habitual criminals are being freed early to re-offend.
What the report does reflect is that despite the great increase in garda numbers and the huge resources - €848 million (£659 million) in 2000 - the State continues to struggle with seemingly intractable problems of lawlessness.
The latest report contrasts strikingly with that of 1971 by the then commissioner, Ned Garvey. Mr Garvey was in charge of a force roughly half the size of the current Garda and his report shows that the level of serious (indictable as it then was) crime was also about half the current rate (37,781 compared with 73,276). Detection rates were slightly higher - 46 per cent clearance compared with 42 per cent now. The 1971 report shows the start of the historic rise of armed crime, with a total of 30 armed robberies recorded, compared with 17 the previous year. The author of the 1971 report also records that in both 1951 and 1961 there were only two such crimes committed in the State. There were also 314 robberies not involving arms in 1971, which is compared with the total of 42 in 1961 and 24 in 1951.
The 1971 report also marks the start of the State's drug problem. The previous year the Garda Drug Squad was set up with one detective sergeant, three detective gardaí and a trained labrador. In 1971, 91 people were arrested for possession of cannabis or LSD and seven for opiates. The latest report records the perennial increase in drugs seizures and arrests.
The 2000 report shows how the problem has grown. Last year 8,395 people were arrested for possession of illegal drugs.
