Crime in Ireland, Increase since 1960s

Politics.ie Discussion on Increase in Violent Crime in Ireland since the 1960s

From a discussion on www.politics.ie Paul Williams and free state Delusion

http://www.politics.ie/culture-community/141511-paul-williams-free-state-delusion-8.html

#76 Kilbarry1 Politics.ie Member 8 November 2010

Originally Posted by Kilbarry1

Crime Rate Then and Now

From The Sunday Tribune, 1st January 2006 by John Burke and Eoghan Rice
Sixty dead in worst year for killings since the Civil War

THE past 12 months have been the bloodiest in the peacetime history of the State, with Waterford emerging as the new murder capital of Ireland. A total of 60 people were killed violently in Ireland during 2005, the highest number since the ending of the Civil War. .....

While almost half of the killings took place in Dublin, the four people violently killed in Waterford gives the southeast county the highest ratio of killings per head of population. ...... The largest increase in killings in Ireland was related to organised crime, with a twofold increase in the number of people killed in gangland feuds over the past 12 months. Nineteen people, all of whom were men, were killed as a result of disputes between criminal gangs.

The proliferation of firearms among criminal gangs is now seen by gardai as a major problem in curbing the growing homicide rate. Fuelled by an increase in the drugs trade and in the accessability of highperformance handguns in particular, criminal gangs . . .especially in Dublin . . . have become increasingly lethal.

However, 41 of the 60 killings in 2005 had no connection to organised crime, highlighting a growing problem of excessive violence in Ireland. Many of the young men who were killed over the past 12 months died from injuries sustained during late-night alcohol-fuelled fights.

Almost half of all male victims were either beaten or stabbed to death. Guns accounted for over 40% of all killings of males in 2005, with 20 men shot to death. Of those, only one . . . the killing of Carlow farmer James Healy, who was fatally shot over a land dispute . . . was not gang-related.

Eight women were killed in 2005, a slight decrease from 2004. Of the eight, three were beaten to death, with a further three dying as a result of stab wounds. Charges have been brought in six of these cases. It is generally easier to prosecute after a woman's death because in most cases the alleged assailant was known to the victim. .............

Quote from John Boland's review of "Badfellas" in the Indo [Irish Independent, 6 November 2010] last Saturday the 6th - it doesn't seeem to be on the Internet:

Before this new era of the gun [from 1970], serious crime had been almost unknown in Ireland, and former Justice Minister Des O'Malley recalled being a young barrister in the Limerick of the 1960s when, at sitttings of the Circuit Court, the county registrar would present the judge with a pair of white gloves.

This he said was no signify that there was no indictable crime to be dealt with, and he added: I don't think there were white gloves in the Limerick of the 1980s, 1990s or 2000s or that there will ever be again".

This was of course a Dark Era in which the State and the Catholic Church worked hand in hand to control people's lives. Now we have freedom and secularism and the results are wonderful!

#77 Kilbarry1 Politics.ie Member 8 November 2010

Massive Increase in Crime Since the 1960s

Since John Boland's article "The Deadly Cliches That Rock the State" doesn't seem to be available on line I will quote more of it. (Boland largely agrees with Paul William's thesis in "Badfellas" on the rise of violent crime from 1970 onwards; he just thinks Williams presents it in hackneyed terms.)

...... it was the contention of Williams that from 1970 onwards, violent republicanism - perpetrated in the South by the headbangers of Saor Eire and in the North by the Provos - was what almost immediately led to a new kind of criminality, one that embraced the same callous disregard for human life as that of the terrorists.

Before this new era of the gun, serious crime had been almost unknown in Ireland, and former Justice Minister Des O'Malley recalled being a young barrister in the Limerick of the 1960s when, at sitttings of the Circuit Court, the county registrar would present the judge with a pair of white gloves.

The 1960s as portrayed here were blissful years or at least they were until towards the end of the decade when the Saor Eire psychos started robbing banks with guns, culminating in the 1970 Arran Quay murder of Garda Richard Fallon about which his son spoke eloquently in the film.

And then along came the Provos who made Saor Eire look like a bunch of amateurs and encouraged the Irish criminal fraternity to emulate their vicious practises. - and get away with them too as the Government of the day was so preoccupied with counter-terrorism that it failed to see what was happening.

That was the thesis and it was one with which it was difficult to argue. Certainly none of the Garda top brass or politicians in the film took issue with it, although Des O'Malley thought it might be an "overstatement" to insist that our current "crime situation" was a legacy of this terrorist violence.

For myself I think that the introduction of drugs as a major criminal commodity changed everything, but no doubt Williams will get around to this in the next two programmes. Now if he could only keep the cliches at bay ...