Garda figures show drop in crime

Provisional garda figures for the first quarter of the year show a slight fall in reported crime.

The figures released by the Department of Justice this morning reveal a 9% drop in crime over the same quarter last year.

There have been fewer cases of sexual assault, drugs offences and burglary. There was a rise, however, in the amount of street personal thefts.

The Minister for Justice Michael McDowell says the figures show the Government is maintaining sufficient garda resources to fight crime.

But the Labour party says the decreases are small when compared to the scale of crime increases in the past two years.

The amount of serious “headline” crimes (usually tried in circuit or criminal courts) dropped from 28,605 in January to March 2002 to 26,126 this year.

Among the findings were:

:: A 37% reduction in cases of assault causing harm;

:: 400 fewer burglaries;

:: A 43% drop in sexual assaults;

:: Murders down by 19%;

:: Around 200 fewer cases of possession of drugs for supply.

Despite this, the number of cases of underage sex more than doubled to 60, theft from the person increased by 26% and there was a 78% rise in bicycle theft.

Opposition politicians claimed the figures simply showed that the gardai's new computer system for recording crime was working efficiently.

Mr McDowell said: “There is no acceptable level of crime, there is no acceptable level of assault, there is no acceptable level of seriousness of crime either for that matter.

“The encouragement I take from these figures for this quarter is that there was a perception setting in that crime was spiralling upwards, that nothing could be done, that we were fated just to have a constant increase in crime quarter after quarter and year after year – and that is not the case.”

Mr McDowell said he was commited to boosting the number of gardaí. He said that in order to achieve this, he would have to increase the level of recuitment at Templemore training college to the maximum.

This would involve taking “emergency steps“, given the number of gardaí retiring at the moment.

He said certain administrative tasks could be contracted out if the correct legislation were passed.