An internal Garda inquiry is taking place into the definition of crimes as "detected" in cases where there is no prospect of prosecutions.
The inquiry stems from revelations earlier this year about memos sent out to gardaí in the Waterford division, pointing out that under Garda management criteria it was possible to record a crime as "detected" even if gardaí only had strong suspicions about who was responsible.
The internal Garda inquiry into the way crime figures were collated in the Waterford division, showing high rates of detection, is understood to have found that local officers were probably right in their interpretation of Garda management guidelines for recording detected crime.
The report from the inquiry is understood to have been completed and to have been handed to the Garda Commissioner, Mr Pat Byrne, and the then minister for justice, Mr O'Donoghue, before the last government left office.•
Both the Government and the Garda gave commitments last February that the report would be published. However, no detail from the report has been released to date.
Instead, it is understood that the report has been sent back to the senior Garda officer responsible to carry out further examination of the way the system for recording "detected" crime operates in other Garda divisions. This work is under way.
A leaked document from the Waterford division, published in the Star newspaper, showed that crimes could be deemed to be "detected" even if no conviction or court proceedings had taken place.
The memos showed that a crime could be deemed to be "detected" if the gardaí were satisfied that they knew who had carried out the offence and also that the investigation had gone as far as it was likely to go.
Also, if an investigation was carried out and a file was sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who then decided that there were no grounds for a prosecution, this too could be deemed to be a crime "detected".
The annual Garda crime report consistently states that the Garda crime "detection" rates - put at 42 per cent in the last report for 2000 - are among the highest in the world.
Senior officers in Waterford protested that they were correctly interpreting guidelines.
Corrections and Clarifications
• The Minister for Justice points out that the report has not yet arrived in his office or in any other section of his Department