The bulk of the increase is mainly due to the 304,819 computer scams recorded in the first nine months of the year, up 22.8 per cent over the same period in 2022.
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Crime slowed its increase
The 1,826,911 criminal offences recorded between January 1 and September 30, 2023, represent a 5 per cent growth over the same period last year, reflecting a slowdown in their trend, as growth in the first quarter of this year was 7.2 per cent and slowed in the second half of the year to 5.8 per cent.
The data that reflect this decrease in the differential of the registered criminal acts are collected in the Balance of Criminality corresponding to the third quarter of 2023 that the Ministry of the Interior has spread this Friday through its web page.
The Balance of Criminality that every quarter spreads the Ministry of the Interior gathers the evolution in Spain of the criminal facts known in every period by the National Police and Civil Guard, the dependent bodies of the autonomous communities (Ertzaintza, Mossos d’Esquadra and Foral Police of Navarre) and those bodies of local police that facilitate data to the Statistical System of Criminality.
Computer fraud
For a year now, this balance sheet has distinguished between criminal offences included in the category of ‘conventional criminality’, which in these first nine months of the year amounted to 1,489,660 and those committed in cyberspace or by digital means, which in the same period amounted to 337,251.
Compared to the same period last year, ‘conventional crime’, which represents 81.5 per cent of the total, barely grew by 1.9 percentage points. As for ‘cybercrime’, which includes 18.5 per cent of recorded criminal offences, it will grow 21.5 per cent over 2022.
By type of crime, the most striking indicator is that of computer fraud, with 304,819 recorded in the first nine months of the year, which represents an increase of 22.8 per cent over the same period in 2022. This type of crime accounted for 90.4 per cent of all cybercrime and 16.7 per cent of all crime recorded in the period.
As regards crimes against sexual freedom (excluding those committed by digital means or means), between January and September 2023 they have experienced an increase of 12 per cent over the same period of the previous year, an increase that, in part, is due to active policies to raise awareness and reduce social tolerance towards this type of crime, which have generated a greater willingness of victims to report them.
Drug trafficking
Drug trafficking offences, on the other hand, increased by 8.9 per cent (15,750 recorded in the period). Being a criminal activity in which there are no citizen complaints, this data is an indicator of increased police activity in this field under specific action plans such as the Special Security Plan for the Campo de Gibraltar.
The Crime Balance released by the Ministry of the Interior also offers a compilation of data on registered criminal offenses broken down by autonomous communities, provinces, provincial capitals, towns with a population of over 20,000 inhabitants and the island territories of Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, La Gomera, El Hierro, La Palma, Tenerife, Ibiza, Formentera, Mallorca, and Menorca.
The document, therefore, has gone from providing data on 250 municipalities to the current 417, which represents a firm commitment to increase the information provided by the department.