THERE HAS BEEN an increase in the number of people who say they don’t worry about becoming a victim of crime, according to a new garda survey.
The Garda Public Attitudes Survey is carried out by Amárach Research every quarter and is commissioned by An Garda Síochana in a bid to gauge the nation’s perception towards crime in Ireland.
It takes a nationally representative sample of 1,500 people.
The latest results found that 55% of those surveyed say they don’t worry about becoming a victim of crime – an increase of 6% on the same quarter in the previous year.
However, some 79% of respondents said that national crime was a “serious” or “very serious” issue – an increase of 8 from the first quarter of this year.
In comparison, only 19% of respondents said they thought local crime was a “serious” or “very serious” issue.
Of the respondent who reported being victims of crime – 5.3% or 76 people – some 66% said they were satisfied with the response they received from gardaí, according to the survey.
The survey reported that 80% of people said they were either “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the service provided by gardaí to their local community.
Some 44% of people said they has a high trust in gardaí, while another 45 said they had a medium trust in gardaí – these figures have remained static for the past year.
Two-thirds of people said they thought gardáí treated everyone equally regardless of who they are.
Deputy commissioner of policing and security, John Twomey said: “It is very welcome to see the continuing reduction in the fear of crime. As well as reducing crime levels, An Garda Síochána seeks to provide re-assurance through increasing our visibility and community engagement.”
“We would hope to see further improvements in public perception in visibility as a result of our new Operating Model, which will increase the number of gardaí on the front-line and has a strong focus on community policing,” he added.
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