Homicides, attempted murders and thefts rise as latest crime stats revealed 

Stock generic image- NO ENTRY crime, scene tape garda, gardai investigation, crime scene, cordon, car, garda patrol car, vehicle, law, order, blue lights, guards, covid-19. 999 or 112 on Thursday 28th January 2021.

Homicides in Ireland rose by 30% across 2022, according to new crime figures for last year released by the Central Statistics Office (SCO).

Thefts and similar offences also rose by a massive 41% over the same 12-month period, the CSO said.

That increase equates to a jump in theft incidents of 19,199 on last year, up to 65,986. Robberies were up 19% and burglaries up 10%.

The statistics agency said there had been 69 homicides in Ireland across 2022 compared with 63 in pre-pandemic 2019 and just 53 in 2021.

The figures show a number of crime categories are showing increases to what was seen before covid. 

Sexual offences increased by 8% between December 2021 and the same date 12 months later, and increased by 6% across 2022 in total.

Such offences were up 6% to 3,688 last year on 2019, the statistics show.

Attempted murders and assaults rose 17%, driven primarily by increases in offences against males aged between 45 and 59 and greater than 60, which went up 22% and 24% respectively.

However, there has been a significant fall in fraud and deception offences, which dropped by 32% in 2022, while offences involving controlled substances also fell by 13%.

The rate of fraud in Ireland fell by 5,461 recorded crimes in 2022 to 11,569 over the 12-month period. Much of that decrease is attributable to declines in unauthorised transactions and attempts to obtain personal or banking information online or by phone, the CSO said.

Fraud in particular saw a more than doubling in incident rates between 2020 and 2021 up to 17,030 crimes as the pandemic raged, before falling back to 11,569 last year as restrictions eased.

“Recorded crime statistics published today for Quarter 4 2022 showed a very significant fall in fraud crime in 2022 while most other categories of crime were up compared with a year earlier,” the CSO’s crime and criminal justice section statistician Jim Dalton said regarding the new figures.

The latest crime statistics continue to be marked as being “under reservation”, indicating that the standards of data collection and collation by An Garda Síochána are less than what is expected from an official source.

The CSO first began to mark Garda statistics as under reservation in 2018 after it emerged that serious issues surrounded the data-collection and recording practices of gardaí, particularly with regard to homicide numbers.

The agency added further that the comparator crime figures for 2020 and 2021 were likely impacted by the public health restrictions in place at the time due to covid-19.