Plan to monitor repeat crime victims

GARDAÍ want to know why some people are more often victims of crime than others, so they can break the cycle.

In Britain, 4% of the population suffer about 44% of the crime and the situation in Ireland is likely to be similar.

Victim Support chief executive Lillian McGovern said they wanted to know the extent of the problem in Ireland, where crime was happening and who the victims were. “The gardaí have promised to put a plan in place this year that will allow repeat crime to be measured. We need to know who the victims are, so we can protect them,” she said. The British repeat crime figures were presented at a pan-European conference of victim support groups in Dublin by crime science expert Prof Gloria Laycock from the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science at University College London. Prof Laycock said the problem of repeated victimisation went unnoticed in Britain because of the nature of police recording systems, the fragmentation of police work, non-reporting by victims and the kind of arithmetic involved. “We didn’t realise the problem was there at all until we started analysing the data. It will continue to get worse if people don’t deal with it,” she warned.