Belfast Telegraph
By Jonathan McCambridge
18 August 2006
More than 550 crimes committed when the Real IRA bombed Omagh are now considered “cleared” by the police, the Belfast Telegraph can reveal today.
Despite nobody yet being brought to justice for the worst single atrocity of the Troubles, the huge number of offences committed in the atrocity eight years ago this week are already logged as clearances by PSNI statisticians.
A total of 562 crimes were recorded in the massacre in August 1998. One man, Sean Hoey, has been charged with 29 counts of murder and is awaiting trial.
However, nobody has been charged with the hundreds of wounding offences which were also counted.
A PSNI spokeswoman explained: “With regard to the Omagh bombing, 29 murders and 533 wounding offences were recorded by the police.
“In relation to clearances, and in line with the Home Office counting rules, 29 murders have been cleared by means of a charge and the 533 wounding offences have been cleared by means of the Public Prosecution Service directing no prosecution.”
The crimes were counted as cleared by the PSNI during the 2005/2006 financial year and would have contributed to the increased number of clearances recorded by police in their end-of-year statistics.
The revelation will once again highlight the controversial Home Office crime counting rules which are used by every police force in the UK.
An investigation by the Belfast Telegraph today reveals that large numbers of crimes cleared by the PSNI do not end up with any suspects being brought before our courts.
In the 2005/2006 financial year police cleared 37,664 offences, 31% of the total crimes during the financial year.
However, only 45% of these 37,664 crimes ended up with a charge or a court summons.
In another 11% of cases the offender was cautioned, but in 36% of cases the complainant declined to prosecute. However, this is still counted as a cleared crime. In 6% of cleared cases, including the Omagh wounding offences, the PPS directed there should be no prosecution and the crimes were recorded as cleared.
Do our crime figures add up?
Why is a cleared crime not a solved crime? Jonathan McCambridge examines the police rules for counting crimes and asks - can the figures be trusted?
The fact that the Omagh crimes are “cleared” will be of little consolation to the families who have campaigned for justice for years. Their fight goes on
The Real IRA bombed Omagh eight years ago this week. The atrocity had a devastating human impact in the community which will never go away.
Police launched one of their largest ever investigations. As well as the painstaking forensic and intelligence challenges, detectives also had the dizzying task of recording the total number of crimes committed.
When counted there were 533 wounding offences as well as 29 murders - the worst single terrorist atrocity of the Troubles.
Eight years later, one man, Sean Hoey, is waiting to go on trial accused of killing 29 people. Nobody has been charged over the wounding offences.
Despite this, because of Home Office counting rules, all of the 562 Omagh crimes are now considered “cleared” by the PSNI.
While the public expectation is that a cleared crime is a solved crime, the reality is, as Omagh demonstrates, somewhat different.
Then what exactly is a cleared crime? A PSNI spokeswoman provided a definition. She said: “Clearances (or detections as they may alternatively be known) are, broadly speaking, those crimes which have been cleared up by police.”
So how is Omagh “cleared up by police”? The charging of Sean Hoey means that the 29 murder offences are rated as cleared.
The 533 wounding offences are cleared because the Public Prosecution Service made a recommendation of no prosecution after receiving a file from the PSNI.
Simply put there is no requirement for justice to be served for a crime to be counted as cleared.
The fact that the Omagh crimes are “cleared” will be of little consolation to the families who have campaigned for justice for years. Their fight goes on. Similarly there is no suggestion that police have closed their investigation. This then raises the question - what is the point of a crime clearance?
Modern day policing and the battle against crime have become intrinsically associated with statistics and targets. The Policing Board and District Policing Partnerships (DPPs) across the Province set police quantifiable targets every year to reduce crime and raise their detection rates.
On a regular basis the Chief Constable will address the Policing Board and use tables of figures to tell them that Northern Ireland is one of the safest places in the UK to live. On a regular basis the political members in attendance tell him to catch himself on.
Taken to its most absurd level you can sometimes find uncomfortable looking local police commanders at DPP meetings telling the few members of the public in attendance that a certain class of crime in an area has reduced by 25% in the past three months. Impressive enough, until you read the figures and see the number of offences have reduced from four to three. The obsession with targets often seems to defy common sense.
The rules which the PSNI use for counting crimes and working out clearances are the same as every police force across the UK. In 2002 a new National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) was introduced by the Home Office for all police forces. It was supposed to promote greater consistency between the forces. It was also supposed to create a victim-orientated approach to the recording of crime.
The NCRS counts offences on the basis of crimes rather than offenders. If six offenders are involved in a robbery and all are arrested and charged, this counts as one clearance. Alternatively, if only one of the six is identified and charged, while the other five remain unidentified and go free, this also counts as one clearance.
There are several ways a crime can be cleared which involve a formal sanction, including a charge or summons, a police caution or an informed warning or restorative caution for juveniles.
However, there are also several methods by which a crime can be cleared where there is no formal sanction. These include if the offender or essential witness is dead or too ill, if a victim refuses to give evidence, if the offender is under the age of criminal responsibility or if the police or PPS decide that no useful purpose would be served by proceeding.
In historical terms, Northern Ireland’s crime rate did not vary significantly between 1945 and the early 1960s, when there were an average of 7,000 recorded offences a year. However, with the onset of the Troubles the number of crimes rose sharply and peaked at 68,255 in 1986.
In 1998 new Home Office counting rules came into effect which meant a number of low level offences were recorded as crimes for the first time - this pushed Northern Ireland’s crime rate through the 100,000 annual offences barrier for the first time.
When NCRS was introduced in 2002, the number of crimes rose even higher, reaching a peak of 142,496 in that financial year.
There were then two years of decrease before recorded crime began to rise again last year. The total of 123,194 for 2005/2006 included an unprecedented rise in the number of violent crimes.
In 2001 the PSNI were ‘clearing’ only 20% of crimes committed, but they had raised this to 31% in 2005/2006. That year’s totals were boosted by the Omagh clearances. Although the crime happened in 1998 the clearances are recorded in last year’s total because that is when the direction from the PPS and the subsequent charges were laid.
The method of how the crimes are cleared is also worthy of examination. Of the 37,664 crimes cleared by the PSNI in 2005/2006, less than half of the cases (45%) ever saw the inside of a courtroom. A third of cleared offences (36%) were dealt with because the complainant declined to prosecute and cautions were handed down in 11% of cases. Significantly the number of crimes being cleared because the complainant declined to prosecute has almost doubled since 1995.
Many of these cases are because the victim is too afraid to prosecute, for example in cases of domestic violence or paramilitary style attacks. In these cases police still have a requirement to have sufficient evidence to charge the offender and the police must also inform them that they are deemed to be responsible. This is a valid clearance method in accordance with Home Office guidelines.
Police use falling recorded crime rates and rising clearance rates as part of their argument that Northern Ireland is a safer place. There is no misleading of the public, just a lack of clarity over how the figures are worked out.
There are other ways of measuring crime, but they are equally unsatisfactory. Court conviction rates (the number of people found guilty in court) are difficult to compare with crimes committed because it often takes years for offenders to appear in court. The most recent conviction rates for Northern Ireland are for 2003 and they show a large increase the number of people coming before our courts.
Another method is the Northern Ireland Crime Survey, a house-to-house interview of 3,000 people carried out to gauge public experiences of crime and their attitude to it. The survey shows that there is a large measure of under-reporting of crime in the province. As well as the political avoidance of the PSNI, there are a large number who don’t report crime because they believe there is no hope of the offender being caught or they think it is too trivial.
Regardless of how crime is measured, public fear of it is hard to control. Months of reassurances over falling crime levels can be undone by one high profile city centre attack. Pensioners often feel that they are living in fear of violence following high profile incidents. Crime figures which tell them they are statistically the safest people in society are irrelevant to their everyday lives if they are afraid to leave the house.
