Perhaps it is just myself, but I have found that a good guide to when one’s opponents do not want people to look too closely at something is when they make a point of undertaking “fact checking” and “dis-disinformation” exercises which allow them to trumpet the equivalent of “There is no connection between bashing your head against the wall and brain damage.”
Thus it is with immigration and crime. There is no such connection, we are regularly told, but as our own senses and experience tell us, including as chronicled daily by Fatima Gunning in the courts, there is such a connection. That assertion is backed by statistical evidence as we showed yesterday in the exponential growth in the demand for interpreters within the criminal justice system.
The latest annual report from the Prison Service provides further evidence. According to that report one quarter – 24.7% – of those committed to prison in 2024 were non-Irish nationals. Excluding those who acquired Irish citizenship a good estimate of the number born outside of the state is around one third.
Hardly surprising then that, as with last month’s Central Statistics Office report on population and migration, the figures on citizenship as the supposed guide to the level of immigration is no longer ceased upon by the “fact checkers” and “debunkers.”
They have been wont to claim that: “Oh of course mass immigration is like the best thing ever but the numbers are not actually that high.” Cue the citizenship statistics which have regularly been used to obscure the actual extent of immigration by conflating citizenship – which by now includes several hundred thousand of naturalised persons born outside of Ireland – with the number of people born outside of the state.
The 2022 Census had shown that while 12% of the population of the state had other than Irish citizenship, that just under 20% had been born outside of the country. Assuming the same gap still exists then somewhere close to 24% – almost a quarter of the population – has been born outside of the state.
Now, let us return to the prison population. That almost one quarter of those sent to prison in 2024 were of other than Irish citizenship is striking enough. However, if the same gap exists between that and the actual proportion born outside of the state applies then we would expect that almost one third – 32% – of prisoners in Irish jails are not Irish.
According to the Prison Service, of non-Irish citizens committed to prison in 2024, other EU citizens accounted for 11.7%; African nationals for 4.2%. Asians for 2.5%; South Americans were 1.2%, UK citizens 1.9% and 3.2% from a large range of other countries around the globe.
By way of comparison, the 2022 Census found that 6% of those enumerated had citizenship of other EU states; 0.9% of the population of the state had citizenship of African states; 0.2% were UK citizens; 1.9% were Asian citizens and 3.2 were from other European states or non European states.
They are the most recent statistics for citizenship and would suggest that the number of prisoners of other EU, African and UK citizenship is vastly out of proportion to the numbers of EU, African and UK citizens living here.
The same applies to the relationship between people born outside of the state and the numbers of them in prison.
There is a clear link then between immigration into Ireland and crime in Ireland. It is difficult to deny that no matter what way you massage the figures. And I note that none of the busters and checkers have sought to “call out” the prison service even though the citizenship metric underestimates that connection.
Perhaps, they agree with Don Quixote who declaimed that “Facts, my dear Sancho, are the enemy of truth.”
Which is the point of Cervantes’ novel, I suppose. Tilting at windmills in the belief that they are dragons. In the modern context, however, this has taken a rather different turn as the creator of the illusions are those with the power to “shape the narrative.”
It is not oddballs such as myself and others who are ‘Quixotic’ when it comes to presenting and explaining what is happening here, but those in authority. Even if their ‘authority’ is based on no more than being dependent on State and EU funding.