18% OF CRIMES NOT ON THE GARDA COMPUTER SYSTEM
18 percent of crimes reported to gardai in 2011 do not appear to have been recorded on the PULSE computer system.
A review carried out by the CSO into the quality of garda crime data has also found that 3 percent of crimes recorded that year were incorrectly classified in the wrong crime category.
And 7 percent classified in a ‘non crime’ category should have been classified as a crime.
The review was carried out following a Garda Inspectorate report last November, which highlighted systemic failures in how crimes were recorded on PULSE.
The CSO suspended the recording of crime data in the wake of the report but has since resumed the practice.
Tim Lenehan is from the CSO:
“One thing that’s important to notice (is) it varies significantly across groups” he said.
“So say, for example, around 10 percent of robberies aren’t being recorded – but 20 to 25 percent of public orders and thefts have not been recorded”.
“In terms of the reason why, the CSO isn’t responsible for the production of the data, so we weren’t able to determine why it’s happening”.
“But our task was to determine if the issue existed and to determine the extent to which the issues existed” he added.
