One of the biggest problems facing Greek society today is crime. Its increase in recent years is significant. Despite the long-winded announcements and plans we hear occasionally from the Ministry of Citizen Protection, the situation needs to improve.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants reside illegally in Greece, and in public opinion, there is a view that they are responsible for the increase in crime and that they are the perpetrators of most crimes.
But is it so, or is it a false impression?
We looked for official information from Ministries and the Hellenic Republic that gave answers.
Indeed, we found quite interesting data regarding the number of migrants committing crimes from 1998 to 2012, the participation of migrants in so-called "serious" crimes, and the number of migrants arrested for various crimes in 2022.
The numbers are relentless and revealing. But let's not forget that in addition to migrants "arrested" for various crimes, there are also those who have not been arrested...
Also, migrants make up about 10% of the total population of Greece, at least according to the most recent data. According to official data quoted by Proto Thema, more than 55% of the prisoners in Greek prisons are migrants
But let's see more details about the number of criminal migrants in our country and their nationalities.
From 6,094 in 1998, over 20,000 migrants perpetrators of crimes in 2012
The first and most interesting data we cite comes from 2013.
On 31/01/2013, the then Minister of Public Order and Citizen Protection, Nikos Dendias, in response to a question by the Member of Parliament Ilias Panagiotarou on the criminality of migrants, cited data from the Directorate of Public Security of the Hellenic Police Headquarters from 1998 (when statistics began) to 2012.
We will present the relevant table here, making some observations for you. In 1998, the number of migrants perpetrators of crimes was 6,094. Their number slowly increased until 2010, when it skyrocketed to 27,016.
In 2012, it "fell" to 20,065. Be that as it may, we are talking about a tripling of migrants criminals in 15 years. If we look at the nationalities of the above, we find that the Albanians consistently hold the primaries.
The rapid increase in Pakistanis committing criminal acts is impressive. From 57 perpetrators of crimes in 1998, they exceeded 2,000 in 2009, reaching 2,612 in 2010.
Another interesting element is the significant participation of Iraqis in crime, with a peak in the three years 2007-2009.
"Stable values" for Bulgarians and Romanians, an unexpectedly large number of Russians involved in criminal acts, while the numbers of Poles and especially Turkish offenders are relatively small.
The last column of the table (OTHERS) includes migrants from various countries who have committed crimes in Greece. Unfortunately, there is no mention of their nationalities, but we notice a large increase of "others" after 2008...
The participation of migrants in "serious crime."
For the involvement of migrants in "serious crime", we found official data from police for the first ten months of 2019.
According to these data, from January to the end of October 2019, 33,729 nationals and 29,154 migrants were arrested for criminal offences.
There were 92 arrests for rape (55 migrants - 37 citizens), 9,019 arrests for theft-burglary (5,417 citizens - 3,612 migrants), 814 arrests for vehicle theft (639 citizens - 175 migrants), 1,077 arrests for robberies (656 citizens - 421 migrants), 137 arrests for homicide (80 citizens - 57 migrants), 106 arrests for extortion (67 citizens - 39 migrants), 290 arrests for fraud (185 citizens - 105 migrants), 13,012 arrests for drugs (8,602 citizens - 4,410 migrants) and finally, 1,298 arrests for customs code violations (973 migrants - 325 nationals).
Similar figures exist for 2008, and there seem to be no substantial changes in the percentage of migrants committing criminal acts.
So in 2008, according to data from police, 42% of those arrested for homicides were migrants, 43% of those arrested for rape were migrants (in 2019, the percentage, as we saw, reached 60%), 45% of those arrested for theft-burglary were migrants, 51% for robberies and 32% for wheelie thefts were migrants.
We should not forget that the "participation" of migrants in the population of our country is less than 10% and as we can see their "participation" in crime is many times more...
The data on the crime rate of migrants in Greece in 2022
We close the article with the most recent data on crime in our country concerning 2022 and coming from the police. From tables 25-29 we quote, we see that in 2022, the perpetrators of the offences (arrested or not) were 144,770.
Of them, 106,043 (73.25%) were nationals, and 38,727 (26.75%) were migrants.
However, from tables 42-47, very interesting data emerges as we see how many were arrested for various offences in 2022. It turns out that the migrants who were arrested were almost as many as the nationals.
A total of 57,333 citizens were arrested (47,728 for spontaneous offences) and 54,212 migrants (25,482 for spontaneous offences and 22,572 for deportation due to illegal stay in our country).
The comparison of the 2013-2022 data shows that within a decade, the migrants perpetrators of crimes in our country almost doubled (from 20,265 in 2013 to 38,727 in 2022...).
Another interesting fact: in 2022, according to Table 37, 108,862 crimes (felonies and misdemeanours) remain unsolved in our country, and the nationality of their perpetrators is unknown.
Epilogue
The facts we have quoted are official and irrefutable. This results in an increase in crimes by migrant perpetrators and a disproportionate percentage of the total population of Greece in the commission of criminal acts.
We emphasise that the information contained in the article is based exclusively on reports from the Ministry of Citizen Protection and the police.
Source: STATISTICAL YEARBOOK OF THE GREEK POLICE, YEAR 2022
READ MORE: Cyprus: Young Arabs attack Israelis in Larnaca (VIDEO)
