Ireland needs a "zero tolerance" crime policy similar to that pioneered by the New York police department, according to a leading Irish Bishop.Raymond Field, an Auxiliary Bishop in the Archdiocese of Dublin, has made the call in response to the recent rise in violent crime which has seen the number of violent killings in Ireland jump by 27 per cent in just one year.
Bishop Field, who is chairman of the Irish Commission for Justice and Social Affairs, is also appealing for the introduction of on-the-spot searches which would allow gardai to search people for knives and guns to determine if they may be carrying a weapon.
The call has been made in the run-up to the launch of a new document 'Violence in Irish Society: Towards an Ecology of Peace', which will be released by the ICJSA -- an agency affiliated to The Irish Catholics Bishop Conference -- later this week.
Speaking about the need to crack down on violent behaviour and crime on our streets, Bishop Field said Ireland needs to tackle violence by adopting New York's famous "zero tolerance" policy
"There needs to be zero tolerance towards violence on our streets. Our community leaders need to take this approach. The garda commissioner, the politicians who drive it, they all have a responsibility. But we as a community do too.
"New York had a zero tolerance policy and they cut out a huge number of incidents. It came from the top and they put it into effect. I would certainly advocate it here but there needs to be the backing of the community. The community can't walk away from this. It's not just a garda problem, it's our problem as a society and we should all be on board to try and address this."
The bishop also pointed towards the recent widespread crackdown on youths carrying knives in the UK after British police admitted that a recent spate of murders showed current initiatives were not stopping the problem.
Officers have been deployed across areas of London blighted by stabbings to stop and search teenagers suspected of carrying weapons.
"I can see [the situation] deteriorating so long as we permit the carrying of knives and offensive weapons the way we do," explained Bishop Field. "The UK has introduced searches now for weapons and they've made a huge number of arrests and confiscated a huge number of weapons.
"[When] a society tolerates you going out armed with your knife, there's something fundamentally wrong with that. In the UK they have cracked down on it and there's no reason to see why we wouldn't follow the same route."
Bishop Field also stressed that one of the key recommendations of the report, which will be released this Thursday, is for leaders of the community to come together to address the problem.
"Violence is too serious a problem today in our society to ignore. Violence in society is everyone's problem and we have to address it together. Therefore, one of our key recommendations is that we would be supporting the call of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin to bring the community leaders together to discuss what we could do together to tackle the problem."
Meanwhile, new figures show that there were 85 murders or manslaughters in the 12-month period to March of this year, compared with 67 in the previous 12 months.
Other findings from the first three months of this year show that there was also an increase of almost 30 per cent in drug offences.
Burglary and related offences were up 14.3 per cent to 6,703 while disorderly conduct offences jumped by 27 per cent.
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