The revelation that the murder rate in Dublin is the fastest growing in Europe should come as no surprise to anyone who has been watching the news. And yet, in another way, it comes as something of a shock. Somehow the news seems to be talking about a different country. Maybe it is, writes John Waters.
Last week's newspapers carried reports of a new publication from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and the Institute of Public Administration, which looks at various aspects of contemporary life in Ireland. I haven't yet got hold of a copy of The Best of Times? The Social Impact of the Celtic Tiger, but media reports suggest it may be an important contribution to our rather slow-dropping understanding of where we are now.
The chapter on crime has been written by Dr Ian O'Donnell, whom I recall from nearly 20 years ago, when he wrote some excellent material on crime for Magill magazine while I was editor. For the past couple of decades he has been one of the more reliable commentators on the changing profile of this society with regard to criminality.
It has often struck me from the way it is talked about in Ireland that we regard rising crime figures as some kind of backhanded compliment to the health of our "modernity". In some perverse way we seem to greet each new rise in the graph as a confirmation that we are indeed becoming like "other modern societies".
I first noticed this about 10 years ago, when I took part in a television debate with a representative of the ESRI who, although we were there to talk about crime, seemed to feel a responsibility to defend the modernisation project against any suggestion of a negative dimension. When I outlined the rising crime statistics (minuscule then compared to now), he responded with a diatribe against the use of corporal punishment in schools. His point, I think, was that things were better on balance than they used to be, and anyone who pointed up negatives in the present without constantly acknowledging this was engaging in a form of reactionary nostalgia. This tendency, which is now widespread, has caused us to ignore or misinterpret reality and therefore respond complacently to a range of urgent problems.
Discussion about crime, like many important discussions, has broken down into opposing viewpoints. On the one hand there is, up to a point, a presentation of a version of reality.
Most of the reporting of crime tends to be done by tabloid newspapers and the crime correspondents of broadcasting stations, who usually take their tone and approach from the tabloids. At this level, one could be in no doubt as to the existence of a problem, as the accounts of murder and mayhem become ever more lurid.
But at the level of serious discussion, the idea of a major escalation in criminal activity has yet to filter through or be fully accepted. In part, this is because most of those who engage in the discussion do not live in or often visit those areas where the worst crime occurs. But it is also because, since crime is used to sell newspapers, the reportage sets off a snobbish reaction among what might be called the broadsheet classes. Contempt for the messenger is causing the message to be ignored. In recent years, a number of "serious" commentators have consistently sought to repudiate the account of rising criminality we obtain from less elevated sources.
Their line of argument tends to focus on year-on-year statistical analyses, conveying an impression of a gently varying graph and suggesting that the presentation of the "facts" in other quarters is sensationalist. Ian O'Donnell is reported as observing that the relative scarcity of accurate information concerning crime in Irish society has made serious debate and rational policy formulation "extremely challenging". I believe this is a reasonable observation, but the problem goes deeper.
The real difficulty is that, in looking back over the history of any social problem besetting Ireland now, it is impossible to establish any kind of bearings. If you go back to the 1950s and conduct a comparison of crime figures then with crime figures now, the picture is astonishing and terrifying.
But those who say this is a pointless exercise are correct because, chronologically speaking, we are not talking about the same society, but various staged reinventions, each of which must be evaluated on its own terms. It is not so much that Ireland has changed as that it has been a series of different places.
Historical comparisons, therefore, have roughly the same validity as comparisons between Sweden and Afghanistan. Thus, crime statistics can be used either to alarm or reassure ourselves, depending on the ideological purpose and the selection of data.
Ireland is such a different place now from even a decade ago that you might as well give it a different name. Its problems are less developments of older problems than wholly new problems which have simply erupted out of the air. Perhaps the best hope of understanding is to stop poring over statistics and look out the window.