Why has Ireland become so violent?

sofarrell84

Why do people think Ireland has become so violent?
76 people were murdered in 2007 - the highest in the history of the State.
Do people not care about society because they feel society does not care about them?
Feelings of detachment/isolation etc?

green123

i blame the parents

listermint

Affluence

paulusdu

I've lived in Dublin for 28 years, a few years in england and a few years in galway.
Every day i read about murders, attacks, rapes, all sorts of serious mindless violent crime. Its true that the statistics show that crimes such as murders are at an all time high.
But i have yet to witness this for myself. Luckily enough i have never been a victim or a witness (or indeed a perpetrator) of any sort of violent crime.
I don’t live in an ivory tower, i work and socialise in the city centre, i have lived in areas of high crime rates, and i do pay attention to whats going on around me. I still feel safe walking through the city centre late at night, i still feel safe driving around dublin and i still feel safe in my home.
While i don’t doubt official figures, i do have to question the coverage that crimes receive, it seems slightly sensationalist.
Although i do feel that peoples attitudes have changed, what is seen as acceptable behaviour was not seen this way 20 years ago, and in 20 years time, levels of acceptability will have changed again.
People seem to show more apathy towards crime though in general, i have discussed this with some friends recently, and our conclusion was that, punishments handed out will not deter people from committing crime.
If someone robs a post office, with a shotgun, what’s to stop him from shooting someone in there? his sentence will run concurrently if he is caught.

Violence according to the news is part of our society now, but im not convinced its as bad as we are told.

Ph3n0m

You then have to look at the mostly apathetic view that people have - "as long as its not me, I dont care".

And when you break down those figures even further, how many of those murdered were criminal-related/fued related?

While the numbers of people murdered is growing, the type of person being murdered isnt going to (IMO) make most people stop and think twice about living in Ireland or think that its becoming a dangerous place

jdivision

I think that it's a combination of factors. I went to school in one of the ten worst urban areas in Ireland (according to the RAPID programme), 50-odd private houses in a suburb of 10,000 people. Every year you could see that the kids were getting worse and worse, more and more violent. Access to drink and drugs compounded it, parents didn't give a damn, a complete lack of social infrastructure for young people, teachers not bothered trying to help kids, people turning a blind eye to stuff so kids never got punished. I could have told you 10 years ago that it was going to go this way and it's going to get worse.
(FYI somebody in my year in prison for murder, another in prison for being an accessory to murder so have some idea about this)

gurramok

Agree there with jdivision. I've said it before, certain elements of the under circa 25-27 generation(yes generalisation but alot of victims/perpetrators in this group) have become detached from responsibility for their actions.

It's as if they don't know right from wrong.

They'd rather kick someone's head when they were down(not common in my age grp 30+ when we were under 25, we'd have a few punches and when someone went down we'd walk away)

They'd use a knife without a thought of the consequences or even worse source a gun. This applies to gangland/domestic/random drug&drink knife attack on strangers.

Another factor is the birth rate.

1981 was the peak birth rate(72,000 births) hence alot more 27 yr olds around than ever. Older than this and your numbers were cut by emigration in 80's/90's.
Younger than this, there are less of them around (1990 had 53,000 babies http://www.cso.ie/releasespublications/documents/vitalstats/2002/vstats_q32002.pdf)

Something went wrong when they were brought up, they lost respect for others and jdivision i think explains it there!

AngryHippie

suburbs
parents that don't give a fcuk
parents too busy to take the time to give a fcuk
cheap intoxicants
apathy
frustration
lack of consequences for many violent criminals

Its not as bad as it looks in the papers, but it is worse than it used to be. Not a credible threat to the fabric of society in most places though is it ?

dresden8

AngryHippie wrote: »

suburbs
Not a credible threat to the fabric of society in most places though is it ?

Try living in Finglas, Tallaght or several other highly populated **** holes that the state has given up on.

As happened with drugs everybody says screw them it's only crapholes that have to put up with it. Only a couple of months ago some oul'wan in work said wasn't it terrible that drugs had reached whatever small town she came from. I told he no, it was great. The culchie tds let Dublin slide down the ****-hole for the last thirty years and now they've reaped what they've sown.

jdivision

Ahem it's not restricted to Dublin. Cork and Limerick are as bad

constitutionus

its not getting violent, its ALWAYS been violent. just now that the 'RA has gone away the papers have to fill the column inches with something. ask anyone what town was like at night during the eighties and they'll tell you there was always morons knifing each other outside the harp on a saturday night. watching on o'connell st bridge was practically national pasttime.

unless of course you think the general and co were cuddly compared to the new breed.

remember the population of dublin alone has near doubled since the 80s . a proportional increase in crime is to be expected. and with any idiot getting page one treatement now it just looks worse

TURRICAN

the thugs are better armed than the gardai,so what have the thugs to be afraid of.NOTHING.

CCCP^

jdivision wrote: »

I think that it's a combination of factors. I went to school in one of the ten worst urban areas in Ireland (according to the RAPID programme), 50-odd private houses in a suburb of 10,000 people. Every year you could see that the kids were getting worse and worse, more and more violent. Access to drink and drugs compounded it, parents didn't give a damn, a complete lack of social infrastructure for young people, teachers not bothered trying to help kids, people turning a blind eye to stuff so kids never got punished. I could have told you 10 years ago that it was going to go this way and it's going to get worse.
(FYI somebody in my year in prison for murder, another in prison for being an accessory to murder so have some idea about this)

I agree with jdivision's view. Not so much view as fact. I came from Portlaoise and by all accounts that town is going right down the drain. There is nothing for younger generation's to do; very limited social outlets, the only focus on community is the GAA. Not that I have anything against the GAA, but without a real heart in a community, it's just a bunch of people living in the same area. It is frightening to learn the age that some people are becoming involved in drugs. I remeber being in school and you could see then and there what kids were going to be messed up, classes we're divided up into who was worth it and who was just a troublemaker. I just hope it doesn't get as bad as England has it...but most likely it will.

DublinWriter

One word - cocaine.

Not only does it's use contribute to violent crime, but it also causes inter-gang warfare among the suppliers.

orestes

Like someone else said earlier, you gotta take the population numbers into account. Yes the number of violent crimes is increasing, but what are the numbers on the number of murders/assaults/rapes per year compared to the number of people in the country at the time?

I agree that a lot of the violent areas have been neglected and you can tell from an early age who is gonna be a thug and who isn't, but I actually think that the violent areas in Dublin are getting better. Tallaght is nowhere near as bad as it was even five years ago due to all of the development going on there and the amount of money being pumped into the place (trust me, I live there, but that said there are still parts of it I won't walk into after dark). I know people from Ballymun who say that since they started the rejuvination project there that it's nowhere near as bad as it used to be.

I think that violent crimes for the most part are usually crimes of passion or crimes of circumstance, committed by individuals for their own reasons, and as such the more people there are the higher the number of violent crimes there will be.

The main problem, as far as I can tell, is the gang warfare problem. This accounts for a large number of the murders in the country, but since so much of it seems to be family oriented I can't think of any way to end it. It seems like a kind of mafia-style family business in areas like Limerick. But f**k it, scumbags killing scumbags is hardly a bad thing as far as I can tell.

mckenna45

DublinWriter wrote: »

One word - cocaine.

Not only does it's use contribute to violent crime, but it also causes inter-gang warfare among the suppliers.

Have you been reading the Sunday World?Cocaine is not half, infact not even a tenth of the problem it is made out to be.The poverty problem needs to be tackled long before the "cocaine" problem.

Solar

I don't believe the country has got more violent....Do we really believe that wives/children in "the good ol' days" didn't get punched and kicked by their husbands after a drunken night and die days later without anyone ever putting the two events together???
Also, we have a national media that reports everything, every beating, every disturbance. Fact remains, if your outside the "male, 20s, on a night out" social group, violent crime is rare.

jdivision

Violent crime has risen significantly albeit it's below European norms. The media covers crime so extensively because that's what people want to read - look at the newspapers that sell most copies, look at the non-fiction bestsellers.

brianthebard

I don't know if its as bad as the media make out. A fortnight ago there was big article in the Sunday world about how violent Sligo has become, with 4 murders in 2.5 years. But they all happened within a very small group of people and were almost all gang related/possible traveller feuds. In general though I don't think Sligo has become more violent, despite those murders.

Riddle101

green123 wrote: »

i blame the parents

I agree, who's the biggest influence in people's lives only their parents. I think that people rub of their parents a lot and that their parents aren't showing an example. Maybe if parents were stricter the kids wouldn't turn into criminals. Also i think with the growing society we live in Murders and Violence are becoming second rate to people and they just don't care

flogen

I've let this truck along for a few days but I think this topic would be better suited to somewhere like AH.

It's not really a Media issue.

Jigsaw

The reason why there is so much violence is because there are unprecedented levels of people in Ireland who deserve extreme violence inflicted upon them.


That is actually not the reason, but it may be a contributory factor.

Look at this list and be grateful we're not near the top! http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita

dRNk SAnTA

Ireland isn't really that dangerous but our problems are self inflicted - we give our kids nothing productive to do and then wonder why everyone ends up binge-drinking and destroying public property.

Why is it that in dublin we make such pathetic use of our coastline? and the pheonix park, it has so much potential but its got ****ing nothing worthwhile in it! If anyone has been to stanley park in vancouver they would realise how we waste the phoenix park.

Anyway, i really think that boredom and inactive lifestyles leads to many of societies problems but nobody does anything except moan to joe duffy.

Intothesea

The (social) angles I think about are: young people
with no real memory of our 20% unemployment
rates being led in a merry dance of unfulfillable
expectation by their relatively, suddenly 'rich'
parents (or the older community in general):
apparent ever-increasing house prices, the vague
notion that success or escaping the family home
before 30 is dependant on marrying smart (inversion
of typical cultural attitude).

The increasing evidence that Ireland is adrift
(not circumspectly directed) in neo-liberal
economic policy and globalisation effects: greater
stratification of societal levels, further disturbed
by actual and perceived trouble (e.g. immigrant
entitlements seen to lower status of native).

In general, I think young people are looking
at a higher climb to an unknown future (living
50 miles along a stagnant motorway to work and
seeing your family for 20 hours a week, anyone?).
The 'unknown' part of it is determined by the
constant upward thrust, the weakness in facing
it exacerbated by smug elders and inexperienced
predecessors, maybe.

/0.02

dSTAR

Violence has become a form of amusement to these sub-humans. What other outlet do these angry, pissed and coked up young b/tards have? So they bash some innocent young guy walking home holding hands with his girlfriend. It makes them feel like BIG men. They get a perverse almost sexual type of pleasure as they drive their clenched fists into some young lads face or even some old digger aged in his 70's. They continue marauding the street as they brag about their display of violence becoming more and more addicted to the thrill of causing often grievous bodily harm to innocent and mostly defenseless people.

arybvtcw0eolkf

dresden8 wrote: »

Try living in Finglas, Tallaght or several other highly populated **** holes that the state has given up on.

As happened with drugs everybody says screw them it's only crapholes that have to put up with it. Only a couple of months ago some oul'wan in work said wasn't it terrible that drugs had reached whatever small town she came from. I told he no, it was great. The culchie tds let Dublin slide down the ****-hole for the last thirty years and now they've reaped what they've sown.

Damn right.

I grew up in Ballymun, and my family still live there and these days all you read about (in relation to Ballymun) is 'regeneration' and how successful its been in Ballymun. Well lads, 'regeneration' in Ballymun has been nothing but a cosmetic exercise in bullsh*t.

What has ''regeneration'' mean't to Ballymun?. It looks slightly better, slightly cleaner and there'a a new civic centre. But scratch the surface and all the same old problems exist.

And in some ways 'Ballymuners' feel more left out and forgotten than ever, why?.

Because a sizeable majority can't be re-homed in the new house's and apartments because immigration came along and caught us all by the ballox, and alot of those shiny new apartments & houses were given over to our immigrants and Ballymun natives were left in the wings.

Thats not fair on either the immigrants or the people who grew up in the area, now in Ballymun we've a new generation of junkie. Immigrant children have been introduced to Ballymun's problems and the wheel now turns full circle.

For years' there was no value in places like Ballymun, Finglas and Tallaght so the main political parties forgot about us and S.F. florished. Now people who have made a few bob have moved out of Ballymun and places like it to more affluent area's and the politicans have followed.

But sadly those left behind will always be left behind to deal with the same old problems while the rest of the country are fed on bullsh*t 'regeneration' projects in Ballymun, Fatima mansions & suburbs of Limerick.

jdivision wrote: »

Ahem it's not restricted to Dublin. Cork and Limerick are as bad

Actually when you take into account that Tallaght has the same population as Limerick, Dublin's problems are a whole lot worse.

Stance

dSTAR wrote: »

Violence has become a form of amusement to these sub-humans. What other outlet do these angry, pissed and coked up young b/tards have? So they bash some innocent young guy walking home holding hands with his girlfriend. It makes them feel like BIG men. They get a perverse almost sexual type of pleasure as they drive their clenched fists into some young lads face or even some old digger aged in his 70's. They continue marauding the street as they brag about their display of violence becoming more and more addicted to the thrill of causing often grievous bodily harm to innocent and mostly defenseless people.

I live in England , all i can say is,... it's as bad if not worse over here .
I will always blame the parents , it is up to them to teach their children how to interact and how to respect others ..it's simple really .I liked your post btw.

Cabaal

somebody please think of the children!!

Dennis the Stone

Why shouldn't Ireland have become violent? The Leprechauns and the King of the Fairies patrolled the country for thousands of years, maintaining law and order but they were destroyed in the early nineties when a motorway was laid over their homes

Crumble Froo

CCCP^ wrote: »

I agree with jdivision's view. Not so much view as fact. I came from Portlaoise and by all accounts that town is going right down the drain. There is nothing for younger generation's to do; very limited social outlets, the only focus on community is the GAA. Not that I have anything against the GAA, but without a real heart in a community, it's just a bunch of people living in the same area. It is frightening to learn the age that some people are becoming involved in drugs. I remeber being in school and you could see then and there what kids were going to be messed up, classes we're divided up into who was worth it and who was just a troublemaker. I just hope it doesn't get as bad as England has it...but most likely it will.

i have to ask... what was there to do 20 years ago that there isnt to do today? you always hear the 'lack of facilities' argument for the 'state of youth today' discussion, but what are we lacking now that we didnt have before?