Cork crime and jail time: Methodology statement 

How we analysed more than 5,000 court reports over a five-year period, and focused on 1,415 cases that resulted in jail terms

Ev Duggan explains the methodology behind the analysis of thousands of court cases — and also cautions that 'this is not the full story'. Picture: iStock

Overcrowding at Cork Prison is getting worse, with more prisoners than beds every day for the past two years.

Annual committal rates have also risen sharply in recent years — from 873 in 2020 to 985 in 2024.

So who are we sending to prison? What parts of the city are they from?

What age are they; what crimes did they commit; what sentences did they get? What else can we learn about them?

To help us answer these questions, in what was one of the biggest data projects ever undertaken by the Irish Examiner, we analysed five years of court stories filed by our senior court reporter Liam Heylin, from 2020-2024.

From Monday, June 23, 2025, the three-day Cork Crime series is running in the 'Irish Examiner' in print and online here. 

Mr Heylin has been covering Cork courts daily for both the Irish Examiner and The Echo for more than 20 years — everything from petty crimes, shoplifting, and public order offences, to more serious cases of assault, rape, and murder.

His coverage offers readers a unique insight into the darker, and often tragic, side of the city — shining a light on Cork’s underbelly.

In total, we analysed more than 5,000 court reports spanning a five-year period.

The search was then narrowed down to just court reports where there was a conviction that resulted in jail time.

This gave us a database of 1,415 cases in total.

From those reports, we then extracted specific details:

• The defendant’s name, age, gender, and address given in court;
• The nature of the crime and the length of sentence;
• Any mention of previous convictions, and mention of alcohol, drugs, or addiction.

This allowed us to break the data down into separate subsets including:

• Types of crime — what was the nature of offences? What crimes were driving the conviction rates?
• Geographical areas — what were the most common addresses given in court? What parts of the city and county had the highest conviction rates? Were there concentrations of convictions in certain areas?

It also allowed us to compare and contrast parts of the city including northside and southside. 

What were conviction rates like in the city centre? How did the large suburbs fare?

• Gender — what percentage of the overall convictions were handed down to men? What types of crimes did they commit? How did that compare with women? Was there a marked difference in crime profiles? Did they receive shorter or longer sentences for similar crimes? Were the crimes being committed by women less serious?
• Prison sentences — The data also allowed us to look at average jail terms across all crime. So what was the average sentence for assault, or for possession of drugs? What were the trends and were there any inconsistencies there?

Did people with an address on the northside of the city get longer or shorter sentences for similar crimes than those on the southside?

• Previous convictions — the data allowed us to explore the criminal background of those before the courts — how many had previous convictions, was there a history of crime, were there possible links between so-called career criminals and disadvantaged areas in the city and county?
• Age profiles — what is the average age of those given prison sentences? These can be further broken down by geographical area, by crime, by gender.
• The role of substance abuse in crimes — again, we were able to look at the percentage of cases where drug and alcohol abuse was mentioned in court — how large a factor was it?

However, while all this data provides a very detailed picture of conviction rates in Cork, it is important to stress that this is not the full story.

The more than 1,400 cases that we analysed do not represent the total of convictions in the five-year period.

The 5,000-plus court reports submitted by Liam Heylin are not the sum total of cases that took place in the city in that timeframe.

In calculating the overall total of convictions, you have to allow for repeat offenders — people receiving a number of convictions in the five-year timeframe.

The same applies to calculating individual crimes by conviction — how many people were jailed for burglary, for instance?

Some cases that came before the courts involved a number of crimes — burglary, threatening behaviour, and drug possession, for example.

Cases where someone was jailed for multiple crimes may skew some statistics, notably the average sentence length for specific crimes.