The number of offences recorded by the police has never been so low. This emerges from police statistics on crime rates.
In the first quarter of 2016, 211,713 crimes were identified, compared to 222,790 over the same period in 2015, which at that time was considered an all-time low. In fact, figures have been decreasing since 2011.
That year, there was a total of 1,063 million crimes across the year. In 2015, there were by comparison 909,641 crimes.
The majority of crimes recorded at the beginning of 2016 related to theft and extortion (80,431), followed by property damage (20,174), assaults (17,979), drugs (12,697) and fraud (9,804).
There were 2,262 car thefts recorded in Belgium during the first quarter of 2016, compared to 2,532 over the same period in 2015.
The thief's preferred brand is Volkswagen, ahead of Mercedes, Citroën, Renault and Ford. The number of burglaries went from 18,110 in the first quarter of 2015 to 15,393 in the same period in 2016.
Over this time period, the number of so-called home-jackings (entering a house to steal car keys) increased from 15 in the first quarter of 2015 to 32 in the same quarter of 2016.
Although there are less pickpocketing incidents, shop thefts or car thefts, there is now more credit card fraud, as well as increased knife attacks.
The Brussels Times
