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Wednesday, June 27, 2007 :
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Stabbing deaths - Knife crime has reached crisis levels
IRELAND’S epidemic of death by stabbing has reached such alarming proportions the country risks being dubbed “stab nation”.
With mindless violence growing at a frightening rate, hardly a day passes without headlines of a fatal stabbing somewhere in the Republic.
The scale of the crisis confronting decent, law-abiding people, and increasingly taking up Garda resources, is graphically illustrated by today’s Irish Examiner analysis.
In the latest incident, a 24-year-old inmate was stabbed to death in Mountjoy Prison in a row with another prisoner. It is worrying that the director of the Prison Service believes it is virtually impossible to ensure a risk-free regime. Until the drug culture is eradicated in our prisons, lethal weapons will proliferate.
Last weekend, Michael Doherty, a 14-year-old settled Traveller, was stabbed to death outside a fast food outlet in Ennis. His grieving father believes the attack took place for no reason. A 17-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has been charged and will be back in Ennis court on Friday.
Any lingering doubts about the scale of knife crime are scotched by figures compiled by Fine Gael Justice spokesman Jim O’Keeffe, which show stabbings have almost tripled in the past four years, with 146 incidents recorded last year.
The scale of the upsurge is disputed by the Department of Justice, which claims there was a 71% increase in the incidence of stabbing over that period. However, the fact remains that knives are increasingly being used as a matter of course and seem to be the preferred weapon of young thugs. Indeed, an analysis of stabbing incidents shows there were 18 murders with knives in 2006 and 128 incidents of assaults causing harm.
The situation is so grave that Mr O’Keeffe has warned society must be prepared to accept there is a “huge problem” with the use of knives during violent incidents.
He believes the best way to combat this trend is by putting more gardaí on the beat and equipping them properly to deal with knife-wielding criminals. He also advocates new approaches to sentencing, and a review of “best practice” in other countries.
In this context, last year’s weapons amnesty was relatively unproductive as far as knives are concerned, with only 105 handed in to the gardaí. Nearly 1,000 firearms were surrendered.
The mounting criticism of the department for its relatively low-key response to knife crime is entirely warranted. It concedes that the rise in knife attacks is “a worrying trend”.
If the current epidemic of stabbing episodes is to be curbed, the use of such weapons must be confronted head-on by the gardaí. There is an onus on new Justice Minister Brian Lenihan to address this issue as a matter of urgency and to provide the gardaí with whatever backing and resources they need.
In the past week alone, there have been three fatal stabbing incidents. The worrying aspect of the situation is that stabbings appear to be more prevalent in everyday society.
It is simply not good enough for the department to explain that legislation dealing with knife crime is “under review”. Unless no-nonsense legislation to curb this kind of crime is fast-tracked, knives will increasingly be used in violent assaults and, inevitably, more people will end up being stabbed to death.
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