THE TDs reassemble tomorrow to make qualitative changes to our legal system, which are likely to do terrible damage by opening the unfairness that is at the heart of our society. And this will come about through the wanton disregard of factual evidence, media generated hysteria and political opportunism.
Changes to the law on bail will impact primarily on the poorer, vulnerable sections of society. The same with the changes on the right to silence. Almost all the additional prison spaces to be provided at such enormous cost will be taken up almost entirely by marginalised young male people. And it will be all to no avail, except perhaps to deepen and extend the sense of alienation that is at the root of so much crime.
Perhaps the recitation of some facts might help. The overall number of recorded crimes in 1994 (incredibly, the Garda Siochana and the Department of Justice has not yet published the figures for 1995) is lower than the number for 1983 (101,036 in 1994 as compared with 102,387 in 1983).
The trend since 1985 of the most serious category of crime, offences against the person, has been downwards 2,348 in 1985 to 1,327 in 1994 (1993 and 1994 were fractionally up on the preceding years but otherwise the trend has been downwards).
The murder rate almost certainly will be up in 1996 on previous years there have been 32 apparently intentional killings so far this year but our murder rate is susceptible statistically to significant variations, simply because it is so low (note comparisons between one year and another on murder rates have been wildly askew because what now may appear to be a murder in 1996 may transpire to have been manslaughter, for instance).
Even if we assume that all the killings so far this year have been what is known as "intentional homicide" and that the rate for the first six and a half months will continue for the remainder of the year, giving a total number of intentional homicides of 59, this still represents only 1.6 intentional homicides per 1,000 population, as compared with (only 1990 figures are available to me for other countries) 2.2 in Austria, 5.1 in Canada, 7.8 in what was then the Federal Republic of Germany, 2.1 in Greece, 7.25 in Luxembourg, 14.3 in The Netherlands, 4.1 in Portugal, 6.8 in Sweden and 3.1 in Switzerland.
The detection rate has climbed since 1985, when it was 33 per cent of all recorded crimes, to 39 per cent in 1994.
More than half the number of recorded crimes are larcenies and of these the evidence is that the value of property stolen is less than £200 in about two out of three cases. This is not to minimise the impact of the crime on the owner of the property but larcenies of goods of a value of less than £200 does not constitute a crime problem of a dimension requiring fundamental change to our system of justice.
SO WHERE is this crime wave? How come, suddenly, this country is in the grip of crime? In a recent RTE television interview with the outgoing Garda Commissioner, Pat Culligan, after he had attempted to cool the hysteria about crime, the RTE interviewer said "But, of course, the crimes have become more violent."
Regrettably, Mr Culligan conceded the point. But what is the evidence for it?
The most startling manifestation of viciousness of crimes is the phenomenon of attacks on old people living in remote areas. In 1984, there were 432 such attacks. The number of such attacks has been around 60 in recent years.
Until recently, the annual Garda crime report lumped a whole series of offences into a category under the heading "Offences against Property with Violence". This category of crime has increased over the last decade but not alarmingly from 41,003 in 1984 to 44,313, with a dip down to 34,930 in 1987. Although there has not been a marked increase in this category, people might still find the level of 44,313 of "Offences against Property with Violence" quite alarming.
But a closer examination of the breakdowns of these statistics reveals a less troubling picture. This category includes burglary (entering a building as a trespasser with intent to steal or to inflict grievous bodily harm or to do unlawful damage to a building), aggravated burglary (burglary committed while in possession of a firearm or other offensive weapon), robbery (stealing by force or fear of force), robbery with arms, arson, malicious damage to property, attempting to cause an explosion and possession of explosive substances.
By far the largest component in this category is burglary but the inclusion of all burglaries under the heading "Offences Against Property with Violence" seems absurd. For instance, breaking and entering an unoccupied warehouse in the middle of the night hardly comes into the category of violent crime. Indeed, the vast majority of house burglaries, while deeply upsetting to the victims, hardly constitutes "violent crime" in the vast majority of instances.
OF COURSE, a certain element of burglaries are violent for instance, entering with intent to cause serious bodily harm or rape but is it not virtually certain that such acts would also be included in the category of offences against the person, the category that has shown a downward trend in the past decade?
When burglaries are extracted from the category of "Offences against Property with Violence", the figure is very much less alarming. It shows that the category of "Offences against Property with Violence", excluding burglary, was only 11,573 in 1994, a little over a quarter of the figure usually quoted. This does represent a significant increase since 1984, when the figure was only 5,775, but the increase has come largely in the category "malicious damage to property" yes, itself a grave menace but hardly justifying the "draconian measures now being called for and about to be enacted.
Quite apart from the contempt which politicians and the media have evinced for the freely available evidence on crime, also depressing is the derision poured on any suggestion of a link between crime levels and social deprivation. Surely, given the ghettos of poverty and alienation that we have created, particularly around Dublin, the surprise is that the crime levels are not far higher than they are?
Why should young, unemployed, unemployable, alienated males from these suburban slums respect the "rights" of us middle class folks to our private property (87 per cent of all recorded crimes are either burglaries or larcenies)? All the more so when the crimes committed by us middle class folks tax evasion and corporate crimes almost never give rise to any investigation, charge, conviction or imprisonment?