Table 2.1 provides further breakdown by offence type of the total number of recorded crime incidents in the 12 months to June 2022 compared with the corresponding period a year earlier.

The number of Homicide offences fell by 38% between 2021 and 2022, falling from 64 to 40. This was mainly driven by a fall of 17 (-53%) in Dangerous Driving Leading to Death incidents over this period. See Table 2.1.

There was an increase of 21% or 3,893 in the number of crimes classified as Attempts/Threats to Murder, Assaults, Harassments & Related offences compared to the previous 12 months. The majority of this came from increases in incidents of Other Assault (+2,398 or +22%) and Assault Causing Harm, Poisoning (+1,415 or +33%). There were also increases in the number of incidents categorised as Murder-attempt (+4 or +44%) and Threats to Kill or Cause Serious Harm (+99 or +6%). In contrast, the number of Harassment & Related offences fell slightly by 23 or 1%. See Table 2.1.

Robbery, Extortion & Hijacking offences were up 223 or 13% over the year. Increases in Robbery of an Establishment or Institution offences and Blackmail or Extortion offences contributed to most of this increase. See Table 2.1.

Incidents of Burglary & Related offences increased by 9% or 820 over the year and most of this came from an increase in Burglary (not aggravated) offences. See Table 2.1.

Increases in incidents of Theft from Shop, Other Thefts, Handling Stolen Property and Theft/Taking of Vehicle & Related offences accounted for most of the increase of 10,559 or 23% in incidents of Theft & Related offences in the year to Q2 2022. See Table 2.1.

Over the year, the number of Controlled Drug offences fell by 27% or 6,133 and reductions in incidents of Possession of Drugs for Personal Use and Possession of Drugs for Sale or Supply contributed to most of this decrease. See Table 2.1.

The number of Weapons & Explosive offences were down by 11% or 314 over the year and this was accounted for mainly by decreases in the number of incidents of Offensive Weapons (nec) and Fireworks offences. See Table 2.1.

There was an increase of 10% or 2,753 in the number of Public Order & Other Social Code offences and this was driven by an increase in the number of Disorderly Conduct offences. See Table 2.1.

Table 2.2 provides further breakdown by offence type of the total number of recorded crime incidents in the 12 months to June 2022 compared with the corresponding period a year earlier.

Homicide & Related offences have declined each year since 2018 when there were 98 such offences recorded. In the year to Q2 2022, there were 40 recorded Homicide offences which was almost two and a half times less than five years earlier. See Table 2.2.

There were 9,828 recorded incidents of Burglary & Related offences in the year to Q2 2022 compared to 18,414 offences for the same period in 2018. In between, the number of offences had been falling at much the same volume between 2018 and 2020 but fell by a much higher amount between 2020 and 2021. The latter change was most likely influenced by the travel restrictions imposed due at the time due to COVID-19. See Figure 2.1 and Table 2.2.

A somewhat similar pattern was observed for Theft & Related offences. The number of recorded incidents were nearly the same at just under 68,000 in 2018 and 2019 before falling to just over 60,200 in 2020. However, again due to the likely impact of COVID-19 travel restrictions, this number fell to 46,670 in 2021 before rising to 57,229 in the year to Q2 2022. See Figure 2.1 and Table 2.2.

The number of crime incidents classified as Fraud, Deception & Related offences has more than trebled from 5,382 in the year to Q2 2018 to 16,202 in the year to Q2 2022. Within this period, the number of incidents had been increasing steadily between 2018 and 2021 but a large volume increase was observed between 2021 and 2022. See Figure 2.1 and Table 2.2.

Crime by Garda regions

In 2019 the number of Garda regions was reduced from six to four, namely:

• Dublin Metropolitan Region
• North Western Region
• Eastern Region
• Southern Region

A breakdown of recorded crime incidents by Garda region for the year to Q2 2021 and Q2 2022 is provided in Table 2.3.

Homicides & Related offences fell across all Garda regions over the year with the largest fall in the Dublin Metropolitan Region (-46%). See Figure 2.2 and Table 2.3.

The number of incidents of Assault increased across all regions as did Theft & Related offences, Fraud, Deception & Related offences, Burglary & Related offences and Robbery, Extortion & Hijacking offences. See Figure 2.2 and Table 2.3.

By contrast, the number of incidents of Controlled Drug offences and Weapons & Explosive offences were down across all Garda regions. The North Western region had the largest fall in Controlled Drug offences (-31%) while the lowest was in the Eastern region (-22%). See Figure 2.2 and Table 2.3.