Recorded violent crimes have soared in the last four years, with a surge in murder threats, serious assaults, and rapes.

The failure of gardaí to prosecute some 3,500 juvenile offenders may have “fuelled a perception of immunity leading to the commission of further offences”, an interim Garda report has found.

Former Assembly member John McCallister has been appointed to the Human Rights Commission.

MILLIONS of pounds have been squandered on a major new probe into alleged security force collusion with loyalist paramilitary killers in Northern Ireland, it was claimed yesterday.

The Belfast-based Committee on the Administration of Human Rights has criticised plans to publish just 15 pages from a 3,000-page report on the inquiry into alleged British collusion in the 1989 murder of Catholic solicitor Pat Finucane.