Kettle's Boyled: That thin blue line is woefully thin
We have 14,000 Gardaí, or to put it another way, we have less than 300 Gardaí per 100,000 head of population.
An Garda Síochána was set up in 1923 and operated under what were known as ‘Peel’s Principles,’ a template for policing first proposed by Sir Robert Peel back in the early 1830s, based on the notion of policing by consent. The power of the police is derived from the consent of the public, and not from the power of the state. That doesn’t mean that the consent of every individual is required for the upholding of the laws of the State, but that the population as a whole accepts the principle of being policed by this unarmed force.
The term ‘the thin blue line, often used to describe the scale of police services in relation to the population, was derived from a 1911 poem by Nels Dickmann Anderson of the same name. The poem reads ‘The thin blue line that falters not / though wavering like a fluttering veil’ and it sums up the fragility of policing services everywhere.
We have 14,000 Gardaí, or to put it another way, we have less than 300 Gardaí per 100,000 head of population. Given the issues with rural policing, drug dealing and associated crimes, and our role as defenders of the EU border with Britain under tricky conditions, we probably need quite a few more. There is one Garda for every 333 citizens, but when you factor in shift work, holidays and days off, there is effectively just one Garda available to around every 1,600 people at any given time. That blue line is woefully thin.
The Gardaí also need the support of the State, with resources, personnel and with respect.
The government must step up support for the Gardai. They need more personnel, but they also need a new, high-security prison so that they aren’t faced with a revolving door where criminals are back on the streets within weeks of going through the courts. The public must be protected from recidivist criminals too, not just with prison spaces but with less spoon-feeding with unlimited free legal aid for instance.
Victims of crime should be more important than criminals, but they’re not. It should be remembered that victims don’t choose to be victims, but criminals choose to commit crimes. They don’t deserve our sympathy, just a protracted view of the back of a cell door.
