evidence: This book explores the dynamics between crime and conflict in Northern Ireland in the years since its foundation until the present. The starting point is the somewhat paradoxical situation whereby Northern Ireland has been historically ranked as a "low-crime" country, despite the fact that it is synonymous with a political conflict, which caused multiple deaths and injuries. [...] Since the foundation of Northern Ireland available data, including statistics on reported crime and crime and victim survey data, shows that so-called "ordinary crime" has remained comparatively low in Northern Ireland. How to explain this discrepancy? [...] Some of the theories put forward for Northern Ireland’s "low-crime" status, during this time and the present day (although rates of crime have risen in recent years, they remain comparatively low), is that the political conflict acted to suppress other forms of criminal activities. In other words, people who may have been involved in offending had their energies diverted elsewhere. Another possible explanation is that high levels of social control, relatively high degrees of religiosity and close community cohesion meant that more commonplace offending such as thefts or burglary were relatively rare.