The finding that victims of personal crimes such as theft, fraud and assault are increasingly unlikely to report them to An Garda Síochána is on the face of it a worrying trend. All the more so because the number of people who say they have experienced such crimes is increasing.
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) found that the rate of reporting of personal crime has fallen from 39 per cent in 2019 to 30 per cent last year. In the same period the percentage of people who said they had been the victim of one of these personal crimes rose from 10 per cent to 19 per cent.
The survey paints a nuanced picture of the reason behind this unwelcome trend. Just over a third of victims did not report the crime because they did not feel the Garda would do anything about it. Another third felt the Garda could not do anything. In most other cases victims felt the crime was not serious enough or result in a material loss.
This pattern speaks to a certain public apathy about crime that may be linked to growing levels of affluence but the key takeaway from the survey has to be the large proportion of victims who believe the Garda would not take action if they reported a crime.
RM Block
Perception is not the same thing as reality and separate figures show that detection rates for most crimes remain pretty much unchanged over the past five years. And as the Garda have pointed out, Ireland is a low-crime country by any objective measure. Trust in the force remains high, according to other surveys. Crime rates per capita have fallen over the last five years, although personal crime is the exception.
The perception that the Garda are not interested in pursuing relatively minor crimes chimes with the survey finding that 51 per cent of respondents feel the force is not effective, along with growing concern about crime generally.
The picture painted by the survey of a public increasingly concerned about crime and losing confidence in the Garda may not necessarily be justified by other data but it still needs to be addressed.
