Cork North crime figures show rise in sex offences

THE latest set of recorded crime figures for the Cork North Garda division have again presented somewhat mixed results, with year-on-year spikes across a number of categories including sexual offences, assaults, burglaries and certain theft-related offences.

The figures for the second quarter of 2019 released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) detail the number of crimes reported during the three-month period across the division, which includes Mallow, Fermoy, Midleton, Cobh and Youghal.

This was the latest quarterly release following the decision to resume publication of crime statistics ‘Under Reservation’.

This category was introduced to highlight concerns regarding the quality of underlying data from An Garda Síochána’s PULSE database.

The CSO has said the categorisation would remain in place until such a time as the CSO was “satisfied that the level of accuracy and completeness of the underlying data was of sufficient quality”.

According to the figures, there were 32 sex-related offences – with rape and sexual assault accounting for 29 of these – reported during the quarter across the division, up from a total of 24 over the same period in 2018.

There were 156 reported offences listed under the category ‘attempts/threats to murder, assaults, harassment and other offences’, compared to 113 for the same period last year.

Within this category there was a notable spike in the number of assaults, rising by more than 50 per cent from 78 to 115.

The number of what are termed as ‘aggravated burglaries’ increased from 42 to 61; thefts from shops increased from 83 to 109; incidents of criminal damage increased from 70 to 112; and fraud, deception and related offences jumped from 29 to 45. The number of weapons and explosive offences increased from seven to 20, including three for the illegal possession of a firearm.

On a more positive note, the anti-drink driving message seems to be sinking home, with the number of incidents reported dropping from 83 to 65. However, the number of drug-driving detections had increased from 11 to 21.

There was a notable reduction in the overall number of drug-related offences from 134 to 118, with the figures for possession for personal use falling from 110 to 92. While there were no cultivation offences recorded, the amount of possessions for sale and supply did rise from 19 to 23. The total number of public order (and other social code offences) decreased marginally from 218 to 212.