Many victims of crime in Dublin city centre don’t report it to the Gardaí, new survey finds

A large share of people who’ve been victims of crimes in Dublin city centre have not reported these to Gardaí, a new survey suggests.

The City Centre Crime Victim Survey, commissioned by Dublin Inquirer, and carried out by Amarách Research, drew on a sample of 600 respondents.

Of those, 12 percent (72) indicated that they had been a victim of some kind of theft in the city centre in the 12 months up to September.

Of those, 71 percent said they had reported the crime to Gardaí and 29 percent said they had not.

The survey also asked about assaults and threats.

Nine percent of respondents (54) said they’d been threatened in a public place, and 3 percent (17) said they’d been threatened with a weapon.

Two percent of respondents (13) had been deliberately hit or kicked, and 1 percent (6) said they’d been injured with a weapon.

Again, the survey asked follow-ups.

Of the 58 respondents with experience of these assaults and threats, 30 percent (17) said they reported what had happened to Gardaí, and 70 percent (41) said they had not.

It is hard to say exactly what that difference in rates of reporting different types of crimes to Gardaí means – if anything, says Ian Marder, an associate professor in criminology at Maynooth University.

It would be hazardous to try to say that people are more likely to report thefts than assaults and threats, Marder says. Because “thefts” and “assaults and threats” are broad offence categories, he says.

Theft could be shoplifting, nabbing a gnome from a front garden, stealing a car. A threat could be angry words after bumping into someone in a pub, or someone waving a weapon at you and saying they’re going to kill you.

What people experience is likely to have an impact on their chances of reporting within that category, he says.

Overall, there’s a lack of research on victim experiences, says Michele Puckhaber, chief executive of the Crime Victims Helpline.

There’s a lot of research done on perpetrators, for good reasons – but focus on people who are harmed is also important, she says.

A spokesperson for An Garda Siochana said that: “An Garda Síochána continues to encourage any victim of any crime to report this to An Garda Síochána.”

Why not?

Of the 21 respondents who experienced thefts but didn’t report the crime to Gardai, 13 (62 percent) said that was because they thought nothing would happen.

Of the 41 who didn’t report a threat/assault to Gardai, 19 (46 percent) said they didn’t think it was serious enough to bother.

Meanwhile, another 12 (3o percent) said there was no point in reporting it to the guards because they didn’t think anything would have happened.

What lies behind statements of belief that nothing would happen, or that it wouldn’t be taken seriously could vary, says Marder, the Maynooth University criminologist.

“You might expect that the guards will do everything they can, but not be able to do anything,” he says. “Or you might expect that the guards wouldn’t care and wouldn’t do anything.”

Another way to analyse the figures on whether victims report a crime would be by demographics.

Gender was a dividing line in the survey, as to who reported thefts to the guards and who didn’t.

Among the 72 City Centre Crime Victim Survey respondents who reported that they’d had something stolen from them, women were more likely to report that to Gardaí (82 percent did) than men (62 percent did).

However, among the 58 respondents who said they’d been threatened or assaulted, men and women were about equally unlikely to report what had happened – 70/71 percent said they had not, respectively.

International research suggests there are cohorts who are less likely than others to report when they have been victim to a crime, says Marder.

“Children might be unlikely to report offences against them and, by extension, older people might be more likely,” he says.

The survey didn’t interview children.

However, among the 58 respondents who said they’d been threatened or assaulted, 100 percent of the 18- to 24-year-olds, nine of nine people, said they had not reported to the Gardaí what had happened.

On the other hand, among the 72 respondents who reported that they’d had something stolen from them, the youngest cohort, 18- to 24-year-olds, were the most likely to report thefts to Gardaí than other age groups: 100 percent of them, 23 of 23, said they had.

Trust in the police falls along lines of social inequality, and this can also impact who reports crimes, Marder says.

Those from communities who feel the police aren’t necessarily on their side are less likely to report, he says, like poor and working class communities, or ethnic minority communities, particularly young men in those areas. “Because you don’t trust that they are there to protect you,” he says.

A breakout of who reported the crimes based on their socio-economic background was not immediately available.

The survey did not collect data on ethnicity, but it did look at skin colour.

Among those who’d experienced thefts, and said they had lighter skin, 70 percent reported the incident to Gardaí, while 88 percent of people with darker skin did so.

Among those who experienced threats or assaults, 14 percent of people with lighter skin reported them, while 81 percent of people with darker skin who’d experienced these did so.

A further factor that can impact whether someone reports a crime to the police is previous experience of reporting a crime, says Marder, the criminologist at Maynooth.

And it does also depend on the offence, and whether someone is likely to get something out of reporting, he says.

“Whether that’s justice, or protection, or perhaps compensation or get the thing back or insurance,” he says. “People need a reason to report.”

The Garda spokesperson said that one area that is widely acknowledged as underreported is hate-related crimes. “We would like to reassure those of an ethnic or minority background that we are here to keep you safe.”

“An Garda Síochána takes hate crime very seriously. Every hate crime reported to An Garda Síochána is professionally investigated and victims supported during the criminal justice process,” the spokesperson said.

What’s expected?

Among respondents to the survey, those who reported a possible crime to Gardai, and got a response, were more likely to say they were satisfied if the report related to an assault or a threat than if it related to theft.

Of the 34 respondents who reported a theft and heard back from Gardai, 38 percent (13) said they were satisfied with the Garda response.

Of 14 respondents who reported an assault or threat, 86 percent (12) said they were satisfied with the response.

It’s also hard to parse and understand those figures, says Marder. “I’m not sure that finding is necessarily representative of international literature.”

Satisfaction is squishy. It can mean different things to different people, he says.

The annual Garda public attitudes survey does broadly try to capture levels of satisfaction with policing – which come back as high, he says.

But the survey questions on satisfaction don’t allow the respondent to offer a neutral response – so that does leave a question mark, he says.

But they do ask other questions, he says – which show 89 percent express mid- to high trust in the guards, and 64 percent say they’re good at tackling crime.

Those results highlight how satisfaction, or trust, is underpinned by what people’s expectations are of what the guards can do for them, he says.

People generally have high expectations of what gardaí can do for them, he says. Many get their main understanding of policing these days from television and streamed shows, he says.

But never in those do police officers drop investigations because the officer in charge was off sick or gets drawn into a higher priority job, he says. In reality, gardaí do use discretion to ration resources, he says.

There’s always a political question about how many resources the police have available, he says. “And then there are kind of political, organisational and operational questions about how they allocate those resources.”

He cites research that captures the police as a secret social service. That says police are expected to be responsible for everything that shouldn’t be happening and about which somebody better do something now.

But they’re never going to be able to do or achieve everything that people expect of them, he says.

There are organisational reasons for that, but also the expectations and the breadth of responsibilities, and speed expected, and the success rates, probably exceed what is realistic, he said.

Gardaí are asked to do things that could be better looked after by alternative services – responding to mental health crises or drug consumption for example, he said.

“They have to balance that their resources will consistently be pulled in that direction against the fact that certain things that are commonly said to be very serious, like protecting people who are at risk of domestic violence, investigating serious sexual violence which take a lot of time to investigate,” he said.

Puckhaber, chief executive of the Crime Victims Helpline, says most surveys find that the more serious the crime, the more satisfied people can be with police responses.

Which suggests to her that satisfaction levels are heavily influenced by resourcing, she says. Because “the sense is that the more serious the crime, the more resources that go towards it”.

The path

What research has shown is that procedural justice is key, says Marder.

If people feel fairly treated, with explained and clear decisions, then they are much more likely to be satisfied with a justice process even if the outcome is not in their favour, he says.

Marder says he sees two areas that should be the focus of investment to help support victims, and community safety.

One is for Ireland to set up a funded national support service for victims of all crimes, along the lines of other European countries.

That service could assess whether a victim needs a referral, whether they may need high or low-level emotional or psychological supports, and explain what their rights may be, he says.

Ireland does have specialised support services: such as Cuan, the new domestic, sexual and gender-based violence agency, and the Victim Support at Court (VSAC) service. (Marder is on the board of the latter.)

For generic crimes – meaning for any crime – it also has the Crime Victims Helpline, he says, but that organisation is small and strapped for funding. Gardaí, of course, also step in, he says.

Contrast this with the Netherlands and its Slachtofferhulp Nederland. They have a well-resourced service embedded within the justice system, says Marder.

Laws in place mean police can transfer victims’ details to the specialist support service automatically, unless the victim opts out, he says.

In Ireland, the second major target for investment should be social programmes, Marder says. Addiction services and homelessness services, with specialists who can help prevent problems from arising in the first place, he says.

Investment is instead being channeled to prisons, under the assumption that victims’ interests correlate with the level of enforcement and punitive outcomes, Marder said. “But that means that victim support services are a total afterthought.”

What does justice mean to victims? “It looks and feels very different for many different victims,” says Puckhaber, of the Crime Victims Helpline.

People may be looking for very different things and many times these are not what the criminal justice system is set up to provide, she says.

There are, of course, some people who want to see consequences, she says, and who want their day in court and are angry.

For theft, people often just want their stuff back, she says, and have minimal interest in that traditional sense of justice where a person is found guilty, and gets punished. “They just want to be made whole financially.”

For assaults, people often want to know why they were attacked, why they were singled out, she says, or an apology.

“They want the person to be sorry for the impact they had on their life,” she says.

“It’s not as common as people think that people want that justice around going to prison or getting that conviction,” she says.

People often want to find meaning, she says. They want something that results in a better outcome for everyone – for the community, themselves, and the perpetrator, she says.

Note: If you’d like to explore the data, you can find some tables in this spreadsheet. We also have an SPSS file, get in touch if you’d like that: sam@dublininquirer.com.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.