A shocking spate of violence - A vacuum where crime can thrive

The murder and dismemberment of Drogheda teenager Keane Mulready-Woods last week sent a chill through this society. The savagery was exceptional even if all murders are savage to one degree or another. In a society grown used to relative calm and the general absence of atrocity since the North’s decades of terrorism ended, it touched a raw nerve. It also seemed a seminal moment even if only time can tell whether it provokes the kind of reaction that effectively challenges the culture that supports and builds crime empires on such inhumane behaviour.

That that murder was followed so quickly by the off-the-cuff murder of Cork student Cameron Blair, aged 20, apparently by young strangers, adds to the impression. That atrocity fueled the argument that this society had crossed a Rubicon and that it has become more violent and that violence is seen more often than heretofore. As is always the case when dealing with specific moment-in-time cases it is difficult to have a suitably wide perspective and not to imagine that today’s horrors are a new, frightening normal.