Crime falls in Poland as criminals emigrating

CRIME rates in Poland are dropping as its criminals are emigrating to countries such as Ireland, according to one of its chief public prosecutors.

This month, leading Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza carried a report which coupled the country’s falling crime figures with the fact troublemakers were leaving in droves to work abroad. In the first half of this year, there were 4,500 fewer crimes reported with a significant drop in the number of petty robberies.

This is continuing a trend picked up in 2004 and in one local prosecutor’s office, there were 700 fewer crimes reported in the first six months of this year.

Piotr Kosmaty is a chief prosecutor in the Polish city of Krakow where the trend is most prevalent. He told the newspaper it was not the falling population that was causing the slide but the type of people who were emigrating.

In Krakow, many who had been identified as football hooligans had left the city and those who stayed were trying to keep their records clean so that they would have no difficulty getting a passport or lining up work abroad.

In the report, Mr Kosmaty said this had the knock-on effect of freeing up police resources and improving their record in detecting other crimes.

He said there was no evidence to suggest criminals were continuing to cause trouble in their new homes.

Consul at the Polish Embassy in Dublin, Malgorzata Kozik, said there was no evidence to suggest that Polish criminals had continued to operate in this country.

Mr Kozik said: “We have not observed any increase in the crime rate relating to Polish nationals living in Ireland and the vast majority of ones that we do know of are of minor seriousness.

“We cannot comment on the views of the prosecutor quoted in this article. As regards Polish police monitoring Polish criminals that have left Poland, there are direct channels of communication between Polish and Irish police.”

Krystian Kozerawski runs Mackozer’s Irish Diary, a blog site for Poles living in Ireland. He does not agree troublemakers who leave Poland are going on to live peaceful lives in Ireland and Britain.

He said: “In my and in many Poles’ opinion, troublemakers haven’t changed; Polish internet forums are full of examples. They are not so visible to Irish people because of the language barrier but for us Poles, our troublemakers are recognisable.

“They can be good workers but at night, after a couple of vodkas and beers, they can be very rude, also they usually get into trouble with other Polish people, because of the same language.”

The Gazeta article added that while petty crime was dropping there was evidence that some of the country’s more sinister criminal rackets were exploiting immigrants right across Europe in an organised fashion.