This release is categorised as a CSO Frontier Series Output. Particular care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release as it may use new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete, for example new administrative data sources.
In 2024, 61% of detected PULSE crime incidents involved suspected offenders who also had a link to at least one previous crime incident.
The proportion of detected PULSE incidents linked to re-offending had marginally increased from 57% in 2019 to 61% in 2024.
The lowest level of detected re-offending between 2019 and 2024 was in 2021, when 56% of crime incidents reported were linked to a historical offender.
In 2024, 39% of detected PULSE incidents were associated with suspected offenders who did not have any previous PULSE detections.
Crime incidents relating to Theft, Fraud, Robbery, and Deception (46%) and Coercion, Intimidation or Exploitation (41%) were most likely to involve a suspected offender previously linked to the same type of incident.
One in five (20%) detected crime incidents reported during 2024 were detected to suspected offenders who had been linked to a separate crime incident less than one month earlier.
The detected re-offending rate in this release is calculated using incidents recorded on PULSE. It does not include Non-PULSE Fixed Charge Processing Notices (FCPN’s) such as speeding or parking tickets if the incident sanction (fine) was paid correctly without escalation via any follow-on summons due to non-compliance. This means the results in this Frontier Series release, which may use methodologies under development, are not directly comparable with the CSO Recorded Crime Detection Series (See our Chapter on Measuring Re-offending for additional information on the methodology used).
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Statistician's Comment
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (25 November 2025) published Re-offending by Detected Incidents 2024.
Commenting on the release, Felix Coleman, Statistician in the Crime and Criminal Justice Division, said: "Today’s Frontier Series release provides a new method of estimating re-offending rates which differs from the CSO’s existing Prison and Probation Re-offending releases. The CSO’s existing re-offending estimates for prison and probation re-offending measures the re-offending rates of people who have left custody or who are under probation supervision during the three years after leaving their justice sanction. This release provides estimates of the proportion of detected crime incidents that were linked or “detected” to a suspected offender with a history of offending. This method of calculating re-offending helps to produce more timely estimates covering 2024 and also increases the coverage of the population of suspected offenders and re-offending incidents. Additional methodology information is available in our Chapter on Measuring Re-offending. As this release is part of the CSO's Frontier Series, care must be taken when interpreting these results as methodologies may change and data sources may be incomplete.
National Re-offending Rates
Overall, more than three-fifths (61%) of detected PULSE crime incidents reported during 2024 were linked to a suspected offender who had at least one previous detection. Statistics also show that the levels of re-offending incidents over the five-year period of the study (2019-2024) were lowest during 2021 (56%), a trend which corresponds to similar COVID-19 related crime statistics trends during the same period.
Looking in more detail at 2024, the rate of re-offending typically ranged between 70% to 90%. However, for vehicle related incidents the rate was significantly lower (29% for Dangerous Driving including Speeding and 37% for incidents relating to Vehicle Maintenance). This was due to the exclusion of a proportion of vehicle related incidents such as speeding offences that were managed solely by the Fixed Charge Processing System (FCPS) and not registered as a PULSE crime incident. These incidents, where offenders fully complied with a sanction (usually a fine) and avoided any subsequent summons and escalation, were not included in the study either as a crime incident or a re-offending indicator. This means the data in this release is not comparable with the CSO's Recorded Crime Detection series. This release measures the detected re-offending rate by linking PULSE crime incident rates to previous incidents when they are detected to the same person.
Factors Linked to Re-offending:
Incident Type
In 2024, almost nine in ten (87%) of detected crime incidents relating to Trespassing and Burglary were linked to suspected offenders with an existing detection. Also, more than eight in ten (84%) of Theft related incidents reported in 2024 were linked to a suspected offender with at least one previous detection.
Looking at re-offences in 2024, 46% of Theft related crime incidents and one-third (33%) of Drug related incidents were detected to a suspected offender whose most recent offence was the same category.
Time Between Incidents
Less than one-fifth (18%) of detected PULSE crime incidents reported during 2024 were linked to suspected offenders who were most recently detected to an incident more than one year earlier. In fact, 20% of re-offending took place within a month.
Regional Distribution
The lowest percentage of detected PULSE incidents linked to re-offending in 2024 were reported in the Tipperary division, where less than half (44%) were linked to a suspected offender with an existing offending background. In contrast, the Dublin Metropolitan Region (DMR) North Central (78%) had the highest percentage of re-offending incidents reported in 2024."