Sharp rise in serious crime in the last year, with homicides nearly doubling – The Irish Times

Over the past year there have been dramatic increases in most serious crime categories, including a 30 percent increase in homicides and a 41 percent increase in thefts.

One bright spot was a 32 percent drop in fraud and related crimes, largely due to a drop in unauthorized banking transactions and attempts to extract personal or banking information over the phone, a category of crime that has peaked during the Covid-19 pandemic reached.

In releasing its final 2022 crime statistics, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) warned that comparisons to previous years’ crime statistics are likely to be affected by the Covid-19 public health restrictions, most of which were lifted early last year.

The highest rate of increase was recorded in theft offenses, compared to 2021, 19,000 additional offenses (41 percent) were registered last year.

Homicides and related crimes, such as attempted murder and dangerous driving, increased by 30 percent to 91 incidents.

The number of homicides nearly doubled in 2022, rising from 23 to 44. This was mainly due to an increase in domestic homicides and street attacks, rather than organized crime-related violence.

There was a 19 percent increase in robbery, extortion and kidnapping offenses and a 17 percent increase in assault, harassment and related crimes.

As expected, with the lifting of Covid restrictions, there has been a 10 per cent increase in administrative offenses and a 10 per cent decrease in offenses linked to the illegal sale of alcohol.

The past year also saw a 6 percent increase in sex crimes, including a 3 percent increase in rape and an 8 percent increase in sexual assault.

drug offense

One of the few crime categories to see a decrease was drug offenses, which saw a 13 percent drop. This was partly due to a 45 percent drop in arrests for growing or manufacturing drugs. Most of these offenses involved the cultivation of cannabis plants.

However, the resumption of unhindered international travel led to a 61 percent increase in people charged with importing drugs. 37 such incidents were recorded last year, compared to 23 in 2021.

In 2022, there was a 10 percent increase in burglary offenses, including a 37 percent increase in the number of people caught with burglary tools.

[ Gardaí responding to domestic violence reports ‘every 10 minutes’ ]

[ One-third of homicide victims in 2021 were women ]

Other categories that saw an increase were gun crime (3 percent), criminal damage (12 percent) and violation of court orders (13 percent).

The CSO said those statistics would be released with a “conditional” caveat due to concerns about the preservation of Garda records.

“This categorization indicates that the quality of these statistics does not meet the standards required for official statistics published by CSOs,” it said.