Crime in Ireland before the 1970s

I remember seeing on the 2000 documentary "Seven Ages" that Ireland had low levels of crime in the 1950s and that gardai would spend days on end doing nothing much.

ScumLord wrote: »

It was a very different country back then.

This sums it up. Cultural norms constantly change. The life and norms of 1996 are quite different to those of 2016, and those of 1976 are very removed from us indeed. This thread I came across one day illustrates how quickly things change: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056724329/7

It's impossible to tell how to norms of today will be viewed by people in 2050 - cultural norms could shift so much that eating meat is universally considered horrific, to pick one easy-to-think-of example.

So stuff that we would consider to be a horrible crime today was not thought of in the same way by people in the past. I read before that slavery was a moral improvement by mankind when they ceased to kill and eat those they conquered and instead allowed them to live and work for them.

Also, with the chance of getting abuse, they were people who travelled around the country, getting work here & there, fixing pots & pans etc
A lot of that way of life has died now, more machinery less need for people, also things are not repaired how they once were.
So a huge number of people that depended on those transient jobs, lost their way of life. Subsequently many of them fell into crime as a means to make money.