Spain maintains low crime rate compared to other European countries

The total number of criminal offences recorded last year totalled 2,325,358 offences, of which 1,949,852 (83.9 per cent of the total) corresponded to the category of conventional crime, which represents a reduction of 1.6 per cent over 2019, the statistical reference year as it was the last one not affected by the restrictions imposed to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Cybercrime recorded a total of 375,506 criminal offences (16.1 per cent of the total), an increase of 72 per cent over 2019.

Spain maintains a low crime rate compared to other European countries, such as the United Kingdom (79.5), Germany (60.7) and Belgium (74.8), Spain’s Ministry of Interior confirmed on Friday, March 1.

The Security Forces were aware of a total of 2,325,358 criminal offences in 2022, a figure that places the crime rate at 48.8 known criminal offences per thousand inhabitants, according to the Crime Balance for the fourth quarter of 2022.

This Crime Balance includes the evolution of criminal offences in Spain recorded throughout the past year by the National Police and the Civil Guard, by the police forces of the autonomous communities (Ertzaintza, Mossos d’Esquadra and Policía Foral de Navarra) and by those local police forces that provide data to the State Security Forces and Corps.

As a statistical novelty, and in order to have a better x-ray to tackle this phenomenon, this balance includes in each of its entries (municipality, province, autonomous community and national) a specific breakdown on cybercrime.

This statistical effort provides more complete information in line with the real evolution of criminality in Spain, affected by the growing penetration and use of the Internet for some years now, which has led to a strong transition in the reality of crime between conventional and traditional criminality, which is decreasing, and the new forms of criminality committed in cyberspace, cybercrime, which is on an upward trend.

The total number of criminal offences recorded in the period January to December 2022 totals 2,325,358 offences, of which 1,949,852 (83.9 per cent of the total) correspond to the category of conventional crime, which includes all forms of crime not committed in cyberspace and which are down -1.6 per cent on 2019, the reference year as it was the last one not affected by the restrictions imposed to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Cybercrime recorded a total of 375,506 criminal offences (16.1 per cent of the total), an increase of 72 per cent over 2019. Therefore, in 2022, compared to 2019, the total criminality recorded by the State Security Forces and Corps has grown by 5.7 per cent.