Multiple responses needed to fight crime

Irrespective of crime figures it is hard not to believe that today’s criminals have become more violent than their predecessors and that they disregard life — anyone’s— in a way that earlier generations did not.

This perception is fuelled by what seems a conveyor belt of gangland murders and shootings, some involving gunmen little more than teenagers.

That perception was unfortunately strengthened by Thursday night’s petrol bomb attack on a house in Waterford where three children suffered serious but, thankfully, non-life threatening burns. One child needed skin grafts.