Northern Ireland's crime rate has fallen from 81.4 crimes per 1,000 people in 2002/03 to 49.8 in 2024/25, when fraud is including the crime rate of Northern Ireland was 52.1 crimes per 1,000 people in 2024/25. During this time period, Norther Ireland's crime rate saw the biggest decline in its crime rate between 2002/03 and 2003/04 when it dropped from 81.4 to 73.3.

In 2023/24 the crime rate of Northern Ireland stood at 55 crimes per 1,000 people, with the policing district of Belfast City having the highest crime rate of 96 crimes per 1,000 people.

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The Police Service of Northern Ireland produces statistics on the number of crimes reported to police in Northern Ireland. Statistics are published on a financial year basis and a comparable data series has been available since 1998/99. These statistics are collected in accordance with the National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) and the Home Office Counting Rules (HOCR). Except for some differences in legislation, they are comparable with police recorded crime statistics in England & Wales.

In 2023/24 there were ******* crimes recorded by the police in Northern Ireland, compared with ******* in the previous year.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland produces statistics on the number of crimes reported to police in Northern Ireland. Statistics are published on a financial year basis and a comparable data series has been available since 1998/99. These statistics are collected in accordance with the National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) and the Home Office Counting Rules (HOCR). Except for some differences in legislation, they are comparable with police recorded crime statistics in England & Wales.

In 2023/24 there were 44,143 violent crimes recorded by the police in Northern Ireland, compared with 49,992 in the previous reporting year.

Monthly update within current financial year. Source agency: Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Designation: National Statistics Language: English Alternative title: PSNI Statistics: Recorded Crime in Northern Ireland

Since 2014, Eurostat and the UNODC have launched a joint annual data collection on crime and criminal justice statistics, using the UN crime trends questionnaire and complementary Eurostat requests

for specific areas of interest to the European Commission. The data and metadata are collected from National Statistical Institutes or other relevant authorities (mainly police and justice departments) in each EU Member State, EFTA country and EU potential members. On the Eurostat website, data are available for 41 jurisdictions since 2008 until 2018 data and for 38 jurisdictions since 2019 data (EU-27, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, Turkey, Kosovo(1)), having drop the data for the United Kingdom separately owing to three separate jurisdictions England and Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland.

This joint data collection and other data collections carried out by Eurostat allows to gather information on:

• police-recorded offences by type of crime
• police-recorded offences by NUTS3 region
• intentional homicide and sexual violence victims and perpetrators (suspected, prosecuted, convicted) by sex
• intentional homicide victims by age, sex, and relationship to the offender
• intentional homicide victims and offences in largest cities
• offenders by justice legal status (suspected, prosecuted, convicted), age, sex, and citizenship
• persons brought before criminal courts by legal status (convicted persons/acquitted)
• personnel by institution (police, courts, and prisons) by sex
• legal cases in first instance courts by type and stage
• prisoners by age, sex, citizenship, and status of the trial process
• prison capacity and occupancy
• people involved in human trafficking by legal status (victims, suspected and convicted traffickers) and victims of human trafficking by all forms of exploitation and citizenship

Where available, data are broken down by sex, age groups (adults/juveniles), country of citizenship (foreigners or nationals) and other relevant variables. National data are available and for intentional homicide offences, city level data (largest cities) are available for some countries. Regional data at NUTS3 level are also available for some police-recorded offences.

Some historical series are available:

• Number of police-recorded crimes by type (intentional homicide, violence, robbery, home burglary, car thefts, and drug crimes) for the period 1993 – 2007
• Number of police-recorded homicide in cities for the period 1993 – 2007
• Number of police officers for the period 1993 – 2007
• Prison population for the period 1993 – 2007

Total number of police-recorded crimes for the period 1950 – 2000

(1) under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244/99

There were 33,295 crimes recorded by the Belfast City police district in 2023/24, the most of any policing district in Northern Ireland in the relevant reporting year.

Findings from the Northern Ireland Crime Survey focusing on crime victimisation and prevalence rates in both Northern Ireland and England & Wales.

Source agency: Justice (Northern Ireland)

Designation: National Statistics

Language: English

Alternative title: Experience of Crime: Findings from the Northern Ireland Crime Survey

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Findings from the Northern Ireland Crime Survey focusing on experiences and perceptions of crime in both Northern Ireland and England & Wales. Source agency: Justice (Northern Ireland) Designation: National Statistics Language: English Alternative title: Perceptions of Crime: Findings from the Northern Ireland Crime Survey

The crime rate in the United Kingdom was highest in England and Wales in 2024/25, at **** crimes per 1,000 people, compared with Scotland, which had **** crimes per 1,000 population, and Northern Ireland, at **** crimes per 1,000 people in 2023/24. During this time period, the crime rate of England and Wales has usually been the highest in the UK, while Scotland's crime rate has declined the most, falling from **** crimes per 1,000 people in 2002/03, to just **** by 2021/22. Overall crime on the rise In 2024/25, there were approximately **** million crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales. Although this was a slight decline on the previous two years, it was still far higher than during the mid-2010s. While crime declined quite significantly between 2002/03 and 2013/14, this trend went into reverse in subsequent years. While there are no easy explanations for the recent uptick in crime, it is possible that reduced government spending on the police service was at least partly to blame. In 2009/10, for example, government spending on the police stood at around **** billion pounds, with this cut to *****billion in 2013/14. One of the most visible consequences of these cuts was a sharp reduction in the number of police officers in the UK. Between 2010 and 2017, the number of officers fell by 20,000, although the number of officers returned to pre-austerity levels by the 2020s. A creaking justice system During the period of austerity, the Ministry of Justice as a whole saw its budget sharply decline, from *** billion pounds in 2009/10 to just **** billion by 2015/16. Although there has been a reversal of the cuts to budgets and personnel in the justice system, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the depleted service hard in 2020. A backlog of cases grew rapidly, putting a strain on the ability of the justice system to process cases quickly. In 2022, for example, it took on average *** days for a crown court case to go from offence to conclusion, compared with *** days in 2018. There is also the issue of overcrowding in prisons, with the number of prisoners in England and Wales dangerously close to operational capacity in recent years.

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In 2023, there were four homicide offences recorded in the Northern Ireland policing district of Armagh City, Banbridge & Craigavon, and one each in seven other districts. In this reporting year, there were 11 homicides in Northern Ireland, with three policing districts recording no homicide offences.

There were 730 sectarian hate crimes recorded by the police in Northern Ireland in 2023/24, compared with the previous year when there were 921.

There were around ***** drug offences recorded in Northern Ireland in 2023/24, an increase on the previous year when there were approximately *****. In this time period, drug crime has increased in Northern Ireland from just under ***** offences in 2002/03 to the peak seen in the most recent reporting year.

The PSNI produces statistics on the number of domestic abuse incidents and crimes recorded by the police in Northern Ireland. Statistics are published on a financial year basis and a comparable data series has been available since 2004/05. These statistics are collected in accordance with the definition of domestic abuse outlined in the Northern Ireland Government Strategy ‘Stopping Domestic and Sexual Violence and Abuse in Northern Ireland’.

There were 1,957 hate crimes reported by the police in Northern Ireland in 2023/24, which was an increase on the previous reporting year when there were 2,264.