This indicator refers to the number of Recorded Crime offenders of selected offence groups.
Crimes reported to, or which become known to, An Garda Síochána are recorded as crime incidents if a member of An Garda Síochána determines that, on the balance of probability, a criminal offence defined by law has taken place, and there is no credible evidence to the contrary.
For statistical purposes, a suspected offender is defined as a valid completed person record (i.e. includes sex and date of birth) which is linked to a recorded crime incident as the ‘suspected offender’. A person can only be recorded as a suspected offender when they have been deemed responsible for the crime by An Garda Síochána and have been issued with a sanction such as a charge, summons or caution.
Crime incidents may have no suspected offender (i.e. if the crime remains undetected) or may have one or more suspected offenders. As such, the number of suspected offenders does not correspond with the number of crime incidents or the number of detected crime incidents. Suspected offenders are allowed alternatives to prosecution in certain circumstances and prosecuted cases may not yet have been tried in court. As such the number of suspected offenders would not correspond with the number of prosecutions or convictions.
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