The biggest surprise for me, when...

...reading Jaywalking With the Irish, was the chapter on Ireland's high crime rate. I guess I'd always assumed that the U.S. was a more dangerous place than any country in Western Europe.

From the book: 

Obviously, urban lawlessness is pervasive in many western countries and comes with the territory wherever old values disintegrate. But Ireland's problem was especially disturbing because at times the random violent assaults had no apparent motive, not even robbery. A nationwide obsession with intoxication ... was the only cause many commentators could attribute to the rising savagery. Almost equally troubling was the general fecklessness -- perhaps the word the Irish most despise hearing about themselves -- being brought to bear on this crisis. Stupendous piles of capital were being poured into the country's infrastructure, such as new roundabouts and a showy sports stadium in Dublin. But less glamorous concerns, such as health care, public safety, and the horrendous fatality rates on the roads, were receiving scant attention from Irish politicians, world masters at speaking obliquely and doing as little as possible about anything problematic, a pursuit in which they are not alone. "A Lot Done, More to Do," ran the pitiful, don't-rock-the-boat bugle cry of the ruling political party (Fianna Fail) some months later. Meanwhile, a survey of 1,250 Irish crime victims by a group called Victim Support showed that more than three-quarters received zero police contact after reporting their burglary or assault. 

In Connecticut, we left our doors unlocked, trusting in the vigilance of the police. At times, the reach of American law seemed heavy-handed, but to live in a country where even unruly adolescents could not be controlled felt scarier by far -- it was like a reincarnation of the every-man-for-himself Wild West. 

What was so different about Ireland? It was obvious that the gardai were understaffed and that Irish prisons were bursting at the seams. In fact, Cork's jail was a laughing stock, what with all the drug-filled tennis balls flung over the walls into the exercise yard. The wardens responded by stretching protective netting overhead; so the inmates' friends started chucking over light bulbs that smashed upon impact and showered intoxicating chemicals upon their beloveds. 

The Irish minister for Justice, Equality, and Law Reform, Michael McDowell, orated one day that wanton violence, thuggery, and destructiveness were obvious symptoms of a society whose sense of civility and public order had run amok. 

"They undermine our collective sense of security; they decrease our sense of freedom from fear; they degrade our amenity of life, especially in urban areas. Indeed, one of the most disturbing developments in recent years is the mindless but vicious behavior of young men who carry out random 'run-by' assaults consisting of a blow to the face of completely innocent and inoffensive strangers," McDowell said, laying the blame on rampant alcohol abuse. 

Some profound transformation seemed to be occurring before our eyes. A letter to the Irish Times pointed out that in 1958, a year of horrendous poverty and miserable unemployment, Ireland and Spain had the lowest serious crime rates in the world, with four murders committed in the Republic, 10 rapes, 79 sexual assaults, 267 violent assaults, 61 robberies, and 3,315 cases of burglary and/or breaking and entering. 

Forty years later, the country was booming with record employment levels, high living standards, free university education, and unprecedented economic, personal, and sexual freedom. But in 1998, despite a modest growth in population (to 3.7 from 2.9 million in 1958), there were 38 murders, 292 rapes, 598 sexual assaults, 691 violent assaults (a more liberal definition put the number at 8,664 in 1999), 2,500 robberies, and 25,730 burglaries (which the gardai liked to celebrate as a major decrease from a couple of years back). 

The Irish police also have another omnibus crime category called "public order offences," which embrace everything from street brawling to vandalism, public drunkenness and abusiveness. From 1995 to 1999, they counted 111,286 of these everyday acts of social mayhem all told, but in the first eight months of 2000 the number shot up to 50,984, a number that would reach more than 400,000 if projected over the next few years. The columnist Louis Power thoughtfully asked how crime rates could have exploded in the midst of the sweeping new affluence when compared to those of a destitute, but much more law-abiding Ireland of four decades earlier. 

The answer, the writer suggested, was that Ireland had made a Faustian bargain in tossing aside its age-old religious beliefs and deeply rooted, community-based social norms for the gratification of unfettered modern indulgence. Personally, I didn't want my children to be beaten into adherence to the old Irish ways, as happened in too many schools a generation back. But Louis Power certainly had a point. 

Concerned about my ability to protect my family in the face of such lawlessness, I brushed aside past warnings about direct speaking and mentioned in an opinion column in a national newspaper, without naming names, some of the problems we had encountered in this rapidly changing Ireland. 

Perhaps it was a coincidence, but the menacing local teenagers, with new recruits, soon resurfaced in our lane, with one snickering, "You got your car stolen and too bad it wasn't burned." One friend suggested that "we sort them," which at certain levels of Irish society means assembling a vigilante pack to appear at a "messer's" doorstep in the night to exact either psychological or physical intimidation. Those weren't my methods, and I struggled to hold my peace, even if it was intensely unnerving to feel that our family had become another one of xenophobic modern Ireland's punching bags. One April afternoon, the young pack assembled outside our door shouting "Fuck Americans!" with no provocation whatsoever, unless they heard the curses I'd been hurling their way in my dreams. This ugliness wouldn't have even qualified as a public order offence, but it was too much. 

With another recently victimized neighbor and supporting phone calls from a third, we finally filed a formal complaint with the gardai. Action must have been directly taken, because the pests once more crawled out of our lives -- this time, we hoped, for good. Our burglars were reportedly also caught, so there was progress. But too often lately, Ireland, this country of the welcomes to which we had moved with such hope, had been breaking our hearts.