The crime rate in Belgium fell to an historic low during the first semester of 2014, with 478,081 incidents recorded by police. In 2011, for the same period, a peak of 537,434 incidents was recorded, a difference of 17%, De Tijd wrote on Tuesday. The police have never seen as few thefts, with 32,871 incidents reported. The number of handbag thefts and armed robberies also fell dramatically. The number of car ram raids continued the trend, with just 73 incidents. The amount of burglaries at homes or businesses went down by 5.9%.
In the Antwerp province, crime levels also hit an all-time low in 2014, with 74,424 incidents in the first semester. The year before, the number of reported incidents was 78,836 for the same period.
The same is true for the Brussels-Capitale region, where the fall was even bigger: the number of incidents went down from 87,258 for the first semester of 2013 to 76,920 for the same period last year.
However, this trend is not so obvious in all the Belgian provinces.
(Source: Belga)
