Lies, damned lies and statistics is a phrase more applicable to the political debate on crime in the State than to that on any other issue. As this week's controversy about the Gallup poll measuring experiences of crime in different European countries illustrates, all statistics published about our crime rate are controversial, writes Noel Whelan
A massive volume and diversity of statistical data is generated in this area. Official measurements of the incidence of individual crimes is supplemented by numerous surveys claiming to measure how many people have been the victim of crime, or fear being the victim of crime.
All of which means that each politician, media pundit, or interest group spokesman who wants to argue that crime is rising, or alternatively that crime is falling, can find a range of figures to support his or her point of view.
The Central Statistics Office has recently been given responsibility for crime statistics. Improvements in crime measurement methodology are being implemented by it and when these have bedded down and passage of time allows for comparison, the office will be in a position to get a clearer picture of the full extent of crime.
However, there are two things about which we can be certain now - fear of crime here is rising rapidly and crime is becoming an increasingly potent political issue.
The twice-yearly opinion survey conducted across the EU for the European Commission, the Eurobarometer, has shown a dramatic rise in the extent to which Irish voters regard crime as an important political issue.
In the most recent Eurobarometer survey more than half of the Irish people surveyed identified crime as one of the two most important issues. This is twice the proportion in any other EU state.
The Week in Politics Frank Opinion broadcast last Sunday night threw some interesting light on how crime and fear of crime feature as issues with the electorate. The programme was the second in a series of focus groups which the US pollster Frank Luntz has been commissioned to undertake for RTÉ. This focus group was held in Clonmel and, when asked to name the issue that they regarded as most important for the election, many of the 30 or so participants identified crime.
However, when they were asked how many of them had personally been a victim of crime in the last year, none of them raised their hands.
When Luntz broadened the question to ask whether they had been the victim of a crime any time in the last five years, only one of them put his hand up and he did so somewhat reluctantly. He explained that he once had a chainsaw stolen.
The Clonmel group was not and did not claim to be representative of the general population, rather it was a gathering of undecided voters from five surrounding constituencies.
There is no doubt that a gathering of people in Dublin is more likely to have included people who had direct experience of crime. However, the real value of the Clonmel exercise was that it enabled a probe below the surface to explore why crime features so high up the list of issues identified as important by voters.
When pressed as to why they had cited crime as a major issue, even though they themselves were not exposed to it directly, the group participants began to answer using phrases like "the papers are full of it", "it's everywhere on the news". What is clear is that the profile of crime is higher than the rate of crime.
Crime stories, whether fact or fiction, have all the elements which modern media loves, a cast of characters which includes villains and victims, an element of "whodunnit" and, at times, graphic violence. Crime sells newspapers and boosts viewership figures.
Fictional crime stories have become the mainstay of TV schedules which are now often built around dramas featuring forensic detectives, underworld activity, or the fortunes of American trial lawyers.
At the same time fact-based crime stories are given increasing prominence in all media outlets and such is the sensationalist manner in which factual crime is reported that the boundaries between it and fictional crime are often blurred.
Acres of newsprint and hours of TV news coverage and radio talk time are given to coverage of some incidents and some criminal court cases. The coverage in recent years of both the investigations and the court cases arising from the deaths of Robert Holohan in Midleton and Brian Murphy outside the Burlington Hotel in Dublin are cases in point.
In the lead into the 2007 election there appears to be a number of aspects to public concern. These include a concern about anti-social behaviour, but the primary concern appears to be gangland crime.
This crime wave is geographically concentrated in parts of Dublin and, to a lesser extent, in parts of Limerick.
These are, in the main, tit-for-tat killings between or within drugs gangs, and there is an extent to which the most recent spate has occurred because the Garda have had some success in disturbing the nests of some of the most brutal gangsters.
The public concern about it is real however, not least because of those incidents where innocent people have been, quite literally, caught in the cross-fire.
The overwhelming majority of voters are unlikely to ever be touched directly by gangland crime, but for many voters the Government's capacity to tackle it more effectively has become a key competence test.
The political parties appear unable or unwilling to dispel public perceptions about the crime issue. They see no mileage in telling the electorate that crime is not as great a problem in the State as voters seem to think it is.
Instead, the parties have decided to play up to public fears on the issue.