Theft offences have significantly increased in the last year, mainly due to an increase in robberies from shops, new Central Statistics Office annual crime figures have revealed.
According to the newly-released data, there were 74,000 theft-related offences last year, up 12% in total, and almost half of these (46%) pertained to a growing number of incidents of thefts from shops.
Moreover, recorded incidents of “Robbery, Extortion & Hijacking offences” were up by 26% (or 531) to a total of 2,601 between 2022 and 2023. This was driven mostly by a rise in “Blackmail or Extortion” and “Robbery from the Person” offences.
Some violent crimes did decrease, however.
Recorded incidents of Homicide & Related offences were down by 19% to 65 incidents over the year of 2023. Most of this decrease was accounted for by a fall in the number incidents classed as Murder offences.
Meanwhile, sexual offences were down 11% to 3,354 reported incidents, and victims of attempted murder or threats to murder, assaults, harassments and related offences fell by 4% in Q4 2023 when compared with Q4 2022.
“The number of male victims fell by 4% while the number of female victims was down by 3%,” the CSO added in a statement.
Furthermore, incidents involving “Public Order and Other Social Code offences” were down by 8%.
According to Jim Dalton, Statistician in the Crime & Criminal Justice Section with the CSO, thefts and burglaries had been decreasing up until the end of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown in 2022.
“The number of recorded incidents of Burglary & Related offences fell from 16,750 in 2019 to 10,884 in 2020 and then to 8,584 such incidents in 2021 which coincided with COVID-19 public health restrictions in place at the time,” he said.
“As restrictions were lifted, the number of incidents then rose to 9,465 in 2022. In 2023, there were 9,545 incidents but this was 43% less than the levels recorded in 2019.”
He went on to highlight trends in fraud-related offences.
“The number of incidents of Fraud, Deception & Related offences in 2023 at 11,292 was 43% more than the 7,921 incidents in 2019,” he said.
“The number of recorded crime incidents for this category more than doubled to a high of 17,124 in 2021 before falling to back to 11,689 in 2022.”
Dalton also added that while assault-related offences were down overall, the age profile of victims was slightly different than previously recorded.
“When you look at the profile of victims by age and sex, there was a mixed experience for male victims of different age groups,” he said.
“There were decreases in the number of victims under 18 years of age (-14%) and those between 45-59 years (-8%) and 18-29 years (-4%). However, the number of victims aged 60 years or more rose by 5% while those aged 30-44 years went up by 1%.”