Violent crime is up, according to the latest statistics. But, as Rosita Boland reports, apprehension about crime, especially in Dublin, and of antisocial behaviour is also feeding people's sense of fear.
Earlier this week the Garda Síochána's 2000 annual report was published, and, unsurprisingly, the figures which attracted immediate attention were those which concerned the areas of crime which relate to the largest proportion of the population.
In 2000 violent assaults increased by 131 per cent from the previous year, numbering 1,703 in total. Almost 80 per cent of the victims, 1,353 of the total figure, were male.
It is virtually certain that the true figure is higher, since these figures on record only reflect the crimes which were reported. Murders, the grimmest crime of all, increased by one from 39 to 38 in 2000.
Any murder is one too many, but the fact is that very few people are at risk of being murdered in this State. What people are at high risk from is being mugged, and the Dublin metropolitan area is where it is most likely to happen to you.
The overall crime detection rate by the Garda was 42 per cent, which is reportedly high by international standards. However, despite this, of £60 million worth of stolen property, only 5.5 per cent was recovered: a statistic to make your heart sink with hopelessness if you have ever arrived home to discover you have been burgled. It's these sorts of crime figures and statistics which affect the majority of the public, and in the run-up to an election, every politician must be keenly aware of this fact.
Tuesday's Morning Ireland had John O'Donoghue, Minister for Justice, and the Labour Party spokesman on justice, Brendan Howlin, in a predictable spat with each other, about their party's various roles in tackling crime.
Publication of the 2000 report had been delayed for a year, due to the introduction of computerised crime analysis; hence the 2001 report should follow soon, and provide us with an even clearer picture of where the problems lie.
Mr O'Donoguhe was asked if he had any indication of what the 2001 figures were likely to be, better or worse? Pressed, he eventually said the indications were that the violent assault figures would be worse again.
What was most striking about the crime report item was not the politicians' barney, but the vox pop contributions by people who were asked if they felt safe on the streets. The overwhelming response was that they did not.
"It's a lot worse than it really should be," one man said. Almost everyone questioned commented that a more visible Garda presence on the streets would improve a feeling of security.
There are no statistics which reflect public fear, but it cannot be ignored in studying crime figures. Fear is an insidious, powerful creature, and very difficult to erase once it gets hold of the collective consciousness. The perception of New York for much of the 1980s and into the 1990s was that it was a dangerous city, and reputations, once attributed, are notorioulsy difficult to dislodge.
Unscientific as anecdote may be, it is sometimes helpful in illustrating a more useful picture of a city than one based solely on statistics.
From my own perspective, since returning to Dublin some four years ago, I know of two colleagues who were savagely beaten, a friend who was held up in daylight with a syringe by teenagers at a cash machine, several friends who had cars either stolen or vandalised, several other friends who were burgled (nothing ever recovered), and my elderly aunt was mugged in a telephone box and left unconscious.
My own experience of crime is probably average by Dublin standards: my bag has been snatched off my shoulder, a man attempted to rob me at a cash machine lobby in daylight, and my bike has been vandalised.
However, the thing I hate most of all about living in Dublin, and which I would rate as the single most damaging thing to my quality of life, is the fear I feel when walking home alone at night when there are no taxis to be had. Although I take the best-lit streets, the sensation of apprehension never leaves me, or the feeling of having to be constantly alert, and no, I almost never see a single garda on the way.
Why does Dublin not feel safe? There is a sense of volatility at night on the streets of Dublin. One reason has to be the drug problem in this city, which breeds crime. It's also true that we drink a lot, and very many of us become obnoxious and aggressive when drunk. Fights outside bars and clubs account for a lot of the recorded crime. There can't be anyone who has walked home at night in Dublin and not side-stepped a nasty scuffle, endured verbal harassment or witnessed men urinating at will.
People are unpredictable when drunk, and it's very hard to police unpredictability. It's a cliché, but there are not enough gardaí on the street to allay public fear, let alone the crimes that regularly occur.
How do other cities cope with their street crime? In Britain, the Metropolitan Police announced this month that they would be taking hundreds of officers off traffic duty and redeploying them to the beat, in an effort to tackle the increase in London's street crime. They also warned that they would be keeping the most persistent street offenders under constant surveillance, and would arrest them on the most minor of offences. Areas which are particularly unsafe would have resources concentrated on them, and gangs would be targeted in an attempt to break them up.
New York is now regarded as a much safer place than it was 10 years ago: how did it achieve this?
A ground-breaking theory of crime prevention, entitled Broken Windows, was pioneered in the US by criminologist George Kelling and urban anthropologist Catherine Coles and applied with great success to US cities, particularly New York.
Later, critics renamed the Broken Windows approach "zero tolerance", which is perceived by some as a bulldozer type of approach to crime, and which attracted much criticism. Kelling does not accept that his theory is that simplistic, but it's certainly true that the latter term would be much more familiar to people than the former.
The theory is simple: the writers argue that, by controlling disorderly behaviour in public spaces, an atmosphere is created where serious crime cannot thrive. It equates public disorder with graffiti, arguing that if it's left unattended, it leads to wider social pathology. Application of the theory does not depend solely on a police force, but involves a network of citizens, community workers and business-owners. Application of this theory across the US has been described as a "grassroots" revolution.
Kelling argues that responsibility for crime control is effectively shared across society, in a proactive way. This contrasts with the valuable, but largely passive, Neighbour Watch programme in place in communities here.
Rightly or wrongly, in Ireland we do depend almost exclusively on our police force to protect us, and when we don't see evidence of them in the street, have nothing else to make us feel secure. And the message is clear: people do feel unsafe on the streets of our capital city.