Globalised crime environment: Conor Lally looks at how immigration has changed the Irish crime scene, especially in the areas of vice and drugs
On the night of July 10th last year, Chinese triad violence spilled onto Dublin city centre streets, leaving one man murdered and another minus his scalp. Two gangs from rival provinces in their native China had become embroiled in a row over a debt at a triad-run brothel in Dublin.
Zhang Da Wei (26), with an address in Dublin's North King Street, visited the brothel with a friend in the weeks before the violent July encounter on O'Connell Street. They used the services of Chinese women at the "business" but left without paying. Another 23-year-old Dublin-based Chinese national, Chen Long, and his gang were given responsibility by the triad-owners for collecting the debt.
When creditor and debtor failed to come to an agreement over the money, it was decided to settle the score with a gang knife fight.
During the mini-riot, one man was stabbed in the chest and died. Part of Zhang's scalp was sliced off. It was found on O'Connell St and later surgically reattached. Another man, Yang Wang (23), was mistakenly stabbed in the neck by one of his own gang but survived.
The encounter was proof that bubbling under the surface in Dublin's ethnic minority communities is a world of gang crime, which while smaller than the domestic underworld, is just as organised and violent. Most non-national gangs exist independently, without Irish nationals in their inner circle.
According to the Irish Prison Service (IPS), more than one in five, 21 per cent, of inmates committed to Irish prisons last year was a non-national. Of the 9,716 committals, some 209 were British and 70 were from other EU countries.
There were 983 committals from "other European" nations, including Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine.
Africans were the next most represented with 446 committals, followed by Asians (257), Central/South Americans (58) and North Americans (21).
A spokesman for the prison service said while 21 per cent of committals were in respect of non-nationals, such inmates account for between 5 and 6 per cent of the prison population at any given time. A large number of non-national prisoners are on remand. They are more likely to be remanded in custody for short periods to allow the authorities time to check the authenticity of their names and addresses before they are released on bail.
The National Consultative Committee on Multiculturalism and Racism said it is "concerned" at the numbers of non-nationals in jail. However, its information officer, Ms Jacqueline Healy, said the issue was a complex one.
"You would have to examine whether the prisoners were actually resident here or merely apprehended here. Crime has now become globalised and the issue [of non-nationals being imprisoned] is happening everywhere across Europe.
"We would also make the point that non-nationals are the victims of crime as well as the perpetrators. And into the future we would hope there would be no bias against black people in sentencing, as has been the case in the US".
Vice and drug-trafficking are the areas in which non-nationals have been most active in recent years. Many of the women working in prostitution and lap dancing in the Republic are foreign nationals. According to Garda sources a significant number have been trafficked here, mostly from Eastern Europe and Africa. However, they stress not all lap dancing clubs are involved in illegal activity.
When trafficked women arrive on Irish shores, they often owe the gangs substantial amounts of money for their passage. They are forced to work in prostitution until their debt is paid.
The Chinese triads have also cornered a significant corner of the vice market in Dublin, although they are engaged almost exclusively in brothel keeping as opposed to lap dancing.
In the drugs trade, African criminals have cornered the herbal cannabis market here. Most of the drug is trafficked from South Africa, earning those involved in shipments huge sums of money. In South Africa a kilo of high-quality herbal cannabis can be bought for €30 a kilo; here it sells for around € 2,700 a kilo.
Away from vice and drugs, some non-nationals gangs are involved in credit card and ATM card scams. Eastern European gangs have used hand-held electronic devices to retrieve an ATM card's data from an ATM machine just after the card has been used. The fraudsters usually look over the shoulder of the person using the card in order to get their pin number.
One Garda source in Dublin told The Irish Times that "Romanian and Russian-speaking" gangs are engaged in organised shoplifting all over the country.
"Even if they are eventually deported a lot of them don't seem to have any problem getting back into Ireland. Some Garda stations near big shopping centres are like the United Nations at times".