The Canary Islands, Cantabria, Navarra and Aragón are the autonomous communities with the greatest increase in conventional crimes
The Crime Balance of the Ministry of the Interior for the first quarter of 2024 reflects that rapes increased by 11.6% compared to the same period of the previous year, also noting an increase of 8.2% in homicides and completed murders (92 cases ) and 13.5% of cybercrime.
The report for the months of January to February of this year, consulted by Europa Press, confirms that crimes increased by 3.2% in Spain as a whole. The figure is significantly lower than that recorded in 2023, a year that closed with an increase of 5.9% according to data from the National Police, Civil Guard, regional and local police.
Specifically, the first quarter of 2024 leaves 1,138 sexual assaults with penetration – rapes -, which represents an increase of 11.6% – the increase was 14% in 2023 as a whole -. Furthermore, crimes against sexual freedom have increased by 6.4% from January to March.
According to Interior, “this increase must be put, in part, in relation to the active policies of raising awareness and reducing social and personal tolerance against this type of criminal acts.” The Ministry adds that this “translates into a greater willingness of victims to report them, which reduces the levels of underreporting in relation to these types of crimes.”
In the first months of the year, serious and less serious crimes of injuries and riots also increased (9.8%) and vehicle theft and drug trafficking, in the latter two cases with increases of 2.4%.
On the other hand, attempted homicides and murders decreased (-3.3%), kidnappings (-12.5%), robberies with violence and intimidation (-2.3%), robberies with force in homes (- 3.4%) and thefts (-4%).
The total number of criminal offenses amounts to 606,895 acts, of which 79.8% correspond to what the Ministry of the Interior includes in the category of conventional crime, which in turn represents a variation of 0.9% on the first quarter of 2023. Cybercrime, for its part, registered an increase of 13.5%, with 110,268 computer scams standing out.
In its assessment, the Ministry of the Interior recalls that drug trafficking crimes “are actually an indicator of police activity”, because very few complaints are made. It also highlights that crimes against property – robberies, robberies and vehicle theft, which represent 43.5% of conventional crime – have decreased by 3.7%.
DATA BY AUTONOMOUS COMMUNITIES
By autonomous community, the evolution of conventional crime increases most strongly in the Canary Islands (9%), Cantabria (8.6%), Navarra (7.6%) and Aragon (6.6%). The regions with decreases are Murcia, Andalusia, Community of Madrid, Basque Country, Ceuta, La Rioja and the Balearic Islands.
Regarding cybercrime, the Balearic Islands are at the forefront of the increase (36%), followed by Ceuta and Melilla (34% in both cases). In this typology there are only decreases in the first quarter of the year in three regions: La Rioja, Navarra and Extremadura.
As in previous reports, Interior highlights computer scams as a striking indicator due to their “impact on crime as a whole.” “Computer scams represented the annual number of 427,448 crimes in 2023; this implies that in just eight years they grew by 509% over those registered in 2016,” he warns.
