Crime rates are dropping, CSO

Sergeant wrote: »

Someone murdered my neighbour last month, but the family didn't bother to report it as they knew the Gardaí are under pressure.

Mmmmmm, smells like bull****!

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-L_zjK7fTB18/UY4qkM_Ly_I/AAAAAAAAAcQ/3DF-c4SBy_c/s1600/bull****_everywhere-e1345505471862.jpeg

I'm deeply skeptical of the notion of crime figures in Ireland being massaged at the behest of politicians. The Guards would have a key part to play in the reporting process and I really can't see them going along with a process that would end up with massaged crime figures being put into the public sphere. In the current financial environment with their pay and jobs under threat there's no way they would let inaccurate crime statistics be published to make any politicians look good especially not Shattner without kicking up an almighty fuss.

Also the notion that people don't bother reporting crimes is a very strange one, especially when you consider the general Irish public seems to have little reticence in kicking up a fuss and demanding the government intervene on a variety of trivial incidents. I've never heard of anyone not report a crime to the Guards [I have heard of plenty of cases of poor/inadequate responses by the Guards but I've never heard anyone say they didnt report a crime to the Guards]

Obviously the Guards aren't going to be successful in terms of securing a conviction for every crime, but if you don't report a crime to the Guards it's a 100% that the criminal won't be found. Anyway is reporting a crime that long and difficult a process? From my experience it's a pretty painless process to report a crime. [As I said getting a satisfactory response is a different issue entirely but I really doubt that there are all that many people who have been the victims of crime so many times and found the Guard's response so poor that they have given up even reporting it. If anything if you have been the victim of numerous crimes/ongoing crimes I would suspect that you are far more likely to put the Guards under pressure and not be fobbed off if you have a 2nd/3rd/4th crime to report]

There's also the viewpoint that even if the Guards don't provide you with a positive resolution in terms of solving your crime, by reporting every crime it give the Guards more information in terms of targeting resources to prevent future crimes.

mikemac1 wrote: »

It's not ordinary gardaí on the street who massage figures.

It's the supers and the management!

No superintendant is going to take over an area and then tell their bosses that crime has shot up since they took over.

Sure ordinary gardaí want more support and resources but middle management want promotions and bad statistics can ruin a career

Tbh it's not just a garda issue, happens in any company with hard working foot soldiers and lying cheating middle management desperate for another promotion

Indeed, as David Simon, creator of 'The Wire' commented, as soon as sombody creates a metric to measure (on any walk of life) you can be damn sure that there are three people hired to figure out how to massage that figure to some advantage.
The best, and most common, way of doing so in policing is 'reclassification' of crimes, so if you see a dip in burglary stats you might wonder at the sudden sharp rise in reports of an offense like 'trespass', after all, who looks at the statistics for trespass?

If you want to decrease crime rates even further, legalize abortion. It's not a quick fix, though, you won't see the effects for 16 or more years, once all those potential criminals don't make it too far beyond the first trimester. That's the theory, anyway, based on what happened in the USA in the late 1980s, after Roe v. Wade (1973)