A new report of crime statistics from the Police Service in Northern Ireland has found that crime and drug rates are soaring.
According to the PSNI figures, violent offences have doubled in the last year and violence without injury is up by 80%.
“The ones committing all the crimes, they’re not right in the head though are they?” said Dermot O’Brien of Larne after hearing about the new crime figures.
RAPE HAS INCREASED FIVE TIMES TO RECORD LEVELS
Rape has increased five times to record levels. Whilst other sexual offences have increased three-fold.
Orla Duffy from Omagh said “It used to be safe around here, but now I’m afraid to go out after dark”.
Ten out of twelve policing districts have experienced much higher levels of crime. Some areas have been worse affected than others, with larger increases in Lisburn & Castlereagh City, and Antrim, whilst Derry and Armagh City saw a decrease in crime, making them safer cities to live in. Belfast also saw an increase in crime rates.
DRUG OFFENCES AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS EVER RECORDED
Drug trafficking and possession of drugs have also seen a massive increase over the last year. Drug offences were recorded as being six times higher.
Some crimes in Northern Ireland have seen a decrease, such as criminal damage, burglary and public order offences.
Report structure
You have been asked to write a short report for this TMA, using headings and/or subheadings. You should begin with a very brief introduction in which you outline what your report will include. The second part of the report should have a section that summarises the content of the newspaper article. The third section should critique the article using evidence from the police report and the module materials. The fourth section should include a brief discussion of the police report itself. The final section should be a short conclusion. If you do not use the report structure in your TMA you will be unable to gain higher than a pass 4 mark. The report should be set out as the example below, although you may want to change the names of the headings.
The newspaper article
Introduction
This section of the report tells the reader what the report will be about and what information will be covered.
Summary of the newspaper article
This section of the report will summarise the article. What does the headline say? What is the article reporting? This should include a brief summary of the figures and also quotes. It’s up to you to decide how much detail you want to include here: you may want to report the actual percentages, or you may want to discuss the actual figures in more detail in the next section. You should report some of the actual figures in either this section or the next one.
Sample Solution
