Are candidates' claims about crime rates bordering on . . . well, the criminal? asks Fintan O'Toole
Mindful, perhaps, of the way Fianna Fáil's relentless promise of "zero tolerance" of crime helped to defeat the Rainbow Coalition in 1997, Fine Gael has been targeting crime as an electoral winner for the last two years. Its high-octane rhetoric has depended on a single, oft-repeated claim: crime is out of control.
In his ardfheis speech last year, Enda Kenny insisted that "criminals in Ireland are getting away with murder. There is no respect for law and order. Across the country, crime is soaring."
The party's justice spokesman Jim O'Keeffe told the same ardfheis that "in fact we now have 500 more crimes every week than we had six years ago".
At this year's ardfheis, O'Keeffe said that "the anecdotal evidence of a crime epidemic is strong, but I want to give you a true picture of what is happening, not based on stories and rumours, but on hard facts, on statistics produced by the Government and on reports from An Garda Síochána itself.
"There can be no argument with these facts, they are undisputed. It is clear that crime is not only up, but it has climbed year-on-year since Fianna Fáil and the PDs came to power and since Michael McDowell became Minister for Justice."
During this campaign, O'Keeffe has insisted that the party is "not scare-mongering" when it claims that there had been a doubling in serious crime in the last decade.
These claims raise four basic questions:
1. Is crime "soaring" to "epidemic" proportions?
No. The National Crime Council's report on crime in Ireland concludes that "international comparisons show Ireland to have a low rate of recorded crime overall". Rates of both homicide and theft are below the EU average. Over recent decades, crime rates have risen and fallen in line with economic and demographic changes. The indictable crime rate doubled between 1960 and 1970 and again between 1970 and 1980. It peaked in 1983 and then declined. Between 1983 and 1987, it fell by 18 per cent.
Rates grew slowly in the early 1990s, but between 1995 and 1999, the trend was sharply downward. Since then rates have fluctuated from year to year but remained broadly static. In 1995, there were 102,484 indictable offences. In 2005 (the last year for which we have complete statistics), there were 101,659.
It is important to bear in mind that the population has risen rapidly in recent years and that crime has in fact not risen in proportion. The Central Statistics Office recently pointed out that the number of recorded headline offences fell from 26 per 1,000 people in 2003 to 24.5 in 2006.
2. Has crime risen year-on-year since Fianna Fáil and the PDs came to power in 1997 or since Michael McDowell became Minister for Justice in 2002?
No, in both cases.
The categorisation of indictable offences has changed a number of times over this period, but the broad pattern seems clear. The number of offences fell between 1997 and 1998, fell again in 1999, fell sharply in 2000, rose sharply in 2001, rose even more sharply in 2002, fell in 2003, fell again in 2004 and rose sharply in 2005. In other words, the number of crimes rises and falls, with no pattern of a consistent year-on-year increase.
3. Has there been a doubling of serious crime in the last decade?
No. The number of indictable offences in 1997 was 90,875. The 2005 figure is 101,659. For the claim of a doubling of the number of serious crimes to be accurate, there would have to be 80,000 more offences committed in 2006 than in 2005. No one seriously believes that the 2006 figures will show such an extraordinary leap.
4. Do we have 500 more crimes a week than we had six years ago?
With a bit of poetic licence, the answer might be Yes. O'Keeffe made this claim in 2006 and was presumably working from the 2005 and 1999 figures. In 1999, there were 81,274 indictable offences. In 2005, there were 101,659, an increase of fewer than 400 a week.
O'Keeffe was exaggerating, but this claim could be said to be within the bounds of general plausibility, but it does depend on picking a good year as the point of comparison. If the comparison was with, say, 1997, when crime levels were higher, the figures would be less rhetorically useful.
At best, one out of four of the Fine Gael claims is accurate. This record has to be placed, moreover, in the context of other obvious weaknesses in the party's law-and- order rhetoric. Its posters promise "tougher bail for criminals", even though bail applies, not to those convicted of offences but to those awaiting trial and therefore presumed innocent.
Its commitment to longer sentences and fewer early releases is not matched by a plan for the massive expansion of prison places that this policy would require. It may be just as well that political exaggeration is not an indictable offence.