Fraud crimes in Ireland increased by 116% in the last quarter as gardaí continued to warn the public to watch out for con artists. The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has published the latest Recorded Crime statistics, which cover Quarter 4 (Q4) 2021 and the full-year results.
Commenting on the release, Jim Dalton, Statistician, said: “Recorded Crime statistics for the year ending in December 2021 showed that the number of fraud incidents recorded on An Garda Síochána (AGS)’s PULSE database continued to rise and reached a new level. There were 16,929 frauds recorded in the 12-month period compared to just 7,834 in the previous year, an increase of 116.1%. The increase was largely driven by unauthorised transactions and attempts to obtain personal or banking information online or by phone.
Recorded crime for 2021 was generally down on 2020 levels. Burglary & related offences fell by more than a fifth (-21.1%), while Weapons & explosives were down by 18.5% and Controlled drug offences decreased by 13.1%. However, there was an increase of 12% in the number of crimes classified as Sexual offences. Users should note when considering crime trends the varying COVID-19 restrictions in place for much of 2020 and 2021 and the likely impact of such restrictions on levels of crime.
A total of 308 offences were recorded on PULSE for breaches of COVID-19 regulations in Q4 2021. This compares to 539 offences in Q3 2021 and has significantly reduced from earlier quarters in 2021 where the level of COVID-19 restrictions were higher compared to the final quarter.”
Fraud crimes increased by more than 116% in 2021
- Fraud crime, largely driven by unauthorised transactions and attempts to obtain personal or banking information online or by phone, more than doubled to 16,929 by the end of 2021
- Kidnapping & related offences were up 27.1% while Sexual offences also increased (+12.0%)
- Homicide and related offences fell by 50% as did Burglary & related offences (-21.1%), Weapons & explosives offences (-18.5%) and Controlled drug offences (-13.1%)
- A total of 308 offences were recorded on An Garda Síochána’s PULSE database for breaches of COVID-19 regulations in Q4 2021
- Full impact of cancelled 999 calls on Recorded Crime statistics still to be determined
- Recorded Crime statistics continue to be categorised as Statistics Under Reser
On the issue of cancelled 999 calls, Jim Dalton, Statistician, said: “An internal AGS investigation into the inappropriate cancellation of calls on its Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) system is ongoing. The premature or improper cancellation of calls on the CAD system may mean that records relating to crimes, which were reported to AGS, were not created on the PULSE system, and are therefore not counted in Recorded Crime statistics. While some preliminary analysis of the impact has been done by AGS, the CSO is awaiting clarification on the full impact of the issue from AGS, including the time periods involved (how far back this issue goes), the crime types impacted, and crucially, the estimated numbers of crimes which were not recorded on PULSE due to inappropriate cancellation of CAD calls, before it can determine the impact on Recorded Crime statistics.”