7.1.08

Only second best

My Irish pride reared its green head once again on reading last Friday’s Irish Times.
According to a paper soon to be published in the Howard Journal of Criminal Justice (whatever that is), Ireland has the second lowest number of prisoners in custody – 72 per 100,000 of the population in 2006. This is in sharp contrast to the US where about 700 per 100,000 of the population are incarcerated. The paper also states that “England and Wales have an imprisonment rate of 147 per 100,000, twice the Irish rate, along with Spain, the highest in Europe”.
Now I’ve no clue if this means there is less crime in Ireland than in these other countries or whether Irish criminals are better at getting away with it. Either way, the most interesting sentence in the article was the one about the only country in Europe which has fewer prisoners than Ireland. “Only Norway, with 66 per 100,000, had a lower imprisonment rate”. Of course it does.

2 comments:

TorAa said...

Wow, you know that in Norway, haha, most "smaller crimes", theft etc are considered a case for the insurance companies not for the Police.

Jo said...

Well I am in South Africa where the death toll in Norway per year is reached by at least midday every day.