Increased Police numbers. Why?

grainne_ed

Hi Everyone,

Im new here & am suprised to see a whole section of the forum dedicated to Garda recruitment. Its does however reflect the strong push by the police both north & south to recruit new members.

Personally I know many friends who have applied for the Garda & the PSNI, indeed many of these have been accepted. Many more have been rejected for various reasons.

Theres no doubt why many people decided to apply, given the high salary & secure job security. But my question is why there such a need to recruit so many new members?

Surley with the peace process in the north going so well & a sense of calm throughout the country, I would expect numbers to be decreasing rather than the strong increase.

I know that when I moved up to Dublin from Offally 10years ago there was hardly a Garda to be seen, especially on the roads. For the initial 6years in Dublin I was never stopped at a check point. However in the past three years the Garda presence on the roads have been strong, with regular checkpoints & even more frequent speed checks.

Regards

Grainne

CharlieCroker

grainne_ed wrote: »

Hi Everyone,

Im new here & am suprised to see a whole section of the forum dedicated to Garda recruitment. Its does however reflect the strong push by the police both north & south to recruit new members.

Personally I know many friends who have applied for the Garda & the PSNI, indeed many of these have been accepted. Many more have been rejected for various reasons.

Theres no doubt why many people decided to apply, given the high salary & secure job security. But my question is why there such a need to recruit so many new members?

Surley with the peace process in the north going so well & a sense of calm throughout the country, I would expect numbers to be decreasing rather than the strong increase.

I know that when I moved up to Dublin from Offally 10years ago there was hardly a Garda to be seen, especially on the roads. For the initial 6years in Dublin I was never stopped at a check point. However in the past three years the Garda presence on the roads have been strong, with regular checkpoints & even more frequent speed checks.

Regards

Grainne

As someone who's starting in templemore in a few weeks, I'm not complaining about the increased numbers. I wouldn't be calling it a high salary. I won't be on the breadline but i am taking a paycut in my new career.
A few years ago, then minister for justice Michael McDowell announced that he was incresing the size of the force up to (i think) 14,000 members from around 10,000 members. Couple this to the yearly retirement figures, the recruitment and training process has to be constant.

The question you need to ask yourself, Would you rather have too many gardai when you dont need them compard to too few when you do??

Shield

grainne_ed wrote: »

Hi Everyone,

Im new here & am suprised to see a whole section of the forum dedicated to Garda recruitment. Its does however reflect the strong push by the police both north & south to recruit new members.

Personally I know many friends who have applied for the Garda & the PSNI, indeed many of these have been accepted. Many more have been rejected for various reasons.

Theres no doubt why many people decided to apply, given the high salary & secure job security. But my question is why there such a need to recruit so many new members?

Surley with the peace process in the north going so well & a sense of calm throughout the country, I would expect numbers to be decreasing rather than the strong increase.

I know that when I moved up to Dublin from Offally 10years ago there was hardly a Garda to be seen, especially on the roads. For the initial 6years in Dublin I was never stopped at a check point. However in the past three years the Garda presence on the roads have been strong, with regular checkpoints & even more frequent speed checks.

Regards

Grainne

High salary? You sure about that?

DublinWriter

Last time I looked, NI had a police force of 12,000 members with a now semi-active 14,000 Army backup policing a population of roughly a million.

In the ROI we have roughly 14,000 members of the guards policing a population kicking the arse off 4 million.

Also remember that the PSNI are highly civilianised and have a civilian support team doing all the backup in terms of HRM and clerical work that the guards would do themselves. The PSNI don't have a full-time band either!

mc-panda

Grainne. I see your point. But I disagree with it immensly.

I advise looking at the CSO crime statistics where you will observe a linear upward trend in all categories of crime in the state year to year from 1980 onwards. Also, road deaths are going up every year. More are needed.

cushtac

People should also bear in mind the level of retirement in both forces.

limerickmonkey

In the North to get the balance between Catholic and Protestant recommended by Patten huge numbers were given voluntary redundancy and these are being replaced.

In the South it's to do with increased crime rates since the 1980s (though they have been relatively stable since then) and public perception.

Personally I don't think it's necessary, and it has been proven that increased police numbers do not decrease crime rates.

Shield

limerickmonkey wrote: »

it has been proven that increased police numbers do not decrease crime rates.

Where is the proof please?

limerickmonkey

A huge experiement was done on this in Kansas in the 1970s:

http://www.policefoundation.org/docs/kansas.html

The way they controlled the experiement, there is no reason to believe that either timing or geography make a difference to the findings.

controller

Guys I really don't see the problem with increasing the forces numbers. They were at 12,000 a few years ago with a plan to get to 14,000 the new target now being 16,000 its not a drastic increase plus the full benefit of the new recruits is not being reaped as the force incurs retirements yearly. In the early 1970's Garda numbers were increased to deal with the troubles, alot of these guys have their thirty years service done and are now retiring therefore the recruitment drives are necessary. Ireland is now a multicultural society and that in itself brings problems. Its a changing world we live in and adequate policing is essential to a Countries prosperity.

Euro_Kraut

mc-panda wrote: »

Also, road deaths are going up every year. More are needed.

Thats not true. The RSA report a significant drop since 1996. 424 in 1996 versus 321 in 2006. When you take the population increase into account the trend is even clearer.

Have a look at this report. Road Safety Authority Report 2006

Euro_Kraut

controller wrote: »

Guys I really don't see the problem with increasing the forces numbers.

There is no real problem. Expect that resources must be taken from another area to fund the extra Gardai. We could use that money for extra nurses, for example.

I think its a fairly worthy use of resources, but every public expenditure does have an opportunity cost.