SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE/MADRID, June 2 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Crime in the Canary Islands increased by 22.5% in the first quarter of the year, compared to the same period of the previous year, to a total of 23,658 criminal offenses, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior made public this Thursday.
Among those that grew the most, intentional homicides and attempted murders stand out, 275% more and 15 cases in total, drug trafficking crimes (+74.6%); thefts (+70%) and robberies with violence and intimidation (+43%).
Likewise, crimes against sexual freedom and indemnity also rose strongly, increasing by 23.8% to reach 255.
In the country as a whole, the Crime Balance for the first quarter of 2022 shows an increase of 21.3 percent in homicides and 21.6 percent in crimes against sexual freedom.
The total number of criminal offenses has gone from 430,176 in the first three months of 2021 to 550,150 in 2022, which represents an increase of 27.9 percent, according to the Ministry of the Interior, which highlights the increase of 60.5 percent of computer crimes compared to 2019.
Intentional homicides and completed murders have gone from 61 to 74 compared to the first three months of 2021, with an increase of 28.4 percent for the same typology but to an attempted degree. Serious and less serious crimes of injuries and riotous brawl also rose by 57.3 percent; 28.1 percent robberies with force in homes, establishments and other facilities; 51.4 percent thefts and 34 percent vehicle thefts.
With these data, the crime rate in Spain in this first quarter is 43.8 criminal offenses per thousand inhabitants, 2.5 points higher than the rate registered at the end of 2021 (41.3) and 3 points below that of 2019 (46.8), the year that the Ministry of the Interior takes as a reference for its statistics by excluding 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
IMPORTANT INCREASE IN COMPUTER SCAMS
In its balance, Interior highlights the “significant increase in computer fraud, a sustained increase over recent years.” In the last twelve months, a total of 223,241 computer fraud crimes have been registered, while throughout 2019 there were a total of 139,094 crimes.
This means that there has been an increase of 60.5 percent in this criminal type of computer crime. In addition, quantitatively, computer scams account for 13.94 percent of the total crimes committed in the last year and have gone from 21,075 registered in 2011 to more than 200,000 in 2021.
Another of the outstanding sections that experience an increase are crimes against sexual freedom and indemnity, which go from 3,446 between January and March 2021 to 4,191 in the first three months of this 2022, 21.6 percent more. If it is extended to the last twelve months, there have been a total of 17,761 crimes of this criminal type, 4.4 percent more than in all of 2021 (17,016).
As in previous reports, Interior relates the data on crimes against sexual freedom with the “active social awareness policies that have caused a greater willingness of victims to report these crimes and put their cases in the hands of the Security Forces and Bodies” , thus reducing the levels of underreporting that may exist in these criminal types.
80% OF SEXUAL CRIMES CLARIFICATION RATE
The clarification rate (the percentage of cases in which the perpetrators are located and arrested) of crimes against sexual freedom and indemnity stands at 80.7 percent in this first quarter of 2022. Specifically, the rate of clarification of sexual abuse is 83.1 percent, that of penetrative sexual abuse is 84.4 percent, that of sexual assault is 79.4 percent, and that of penetrative sexual assault is 84.4 percent.
Drug trafficking crimes, for their part, increased by 4.6 percent, going from 4,286 in the first quarter of 2021 to 4,482 between January and March 2022. “This increase experienced is closely related in this case to the performance of the Security Forces and Bodies, within the framework of specific plans such as the Special Security Plan for the Campo de Gibraltar, given that very few complaints are made about this criminal phenomenon,” according to Interior.
The statistics include data from municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants throughout Spain, with information from the National Police and the Civil Guard, as well as the security forces dependent on the autonomous communities (Ertzaintza, Mossos d’Esquadra and Navarra Police), and also by those Local Police bodies that provide data to the State Security Forces and Bodies.