THE crime It continues to exist and even grows, but the virtual world is gaining weight as a crime scene. The assessment prepared by the Home office With his statistics, he shows that in the cake in which the different criminal offences registered in Cordoba are distributed, those committed through the Internet, especially scams, continue to grow in number and proportionally to the rest.
Concretely, and in the first half of this year 2024, they already represent a quarter of all the clerks in the province of Córdoba, according to the Ministry of the Interior. Between January and June, 16,215 were registered criminal offenceswhich is 3.83 percent more than in the same period of the previous year.
Of these crimes, a quarter took place in the digital world. There were 4,013 of them, which represents 24.7 percent of all those committed during the period. Among them, a large majority were computer scams, which have grown considerably in recent years since the grid It increasingly concentrates computer data and data of all kinds. They were 3,510 compared to 2,990 in the first half of 2023, which represents an increase of 16 percent.
The rest, 503, corresponded to other criminal offences also in the virtual field that the data of the Ministry of the Interior do not detail. This means that Internet scams represent 21 percent of all crimes committed in the province of Córdoba and shows the need to act both against the perpetrators and to take security measures. self-protection that citizens must adopt to avoid attacks that can sometimes have very serious consequences on their economy.
The analysis of the crimes shows both a increase in absolute terms in recent years, such as the growth of cybercrime. During the last year 2023, 31,856 criminal offences were registered in Córdoba, which represents a growth of 12 percent compared to the whole of the previous year, but the increase in those committed via the Internet was very pronounced: 42 percent. They had gone from 5,414 in 2022 to 7,691, which represents 24 percent. Scams via the Internet itself numbered 21, reaching 6,758. One in five criminal offences.
Changes
The evolution has been constant since, according to the Ministry of the Interior, in 2022, 28,451 criminal offences were registered in the province of Córdoba, of which 5,414 were cybercrimes. This is 19 percent and most of them were once again scams that occurred on the Internet.
This is the consolidation of a security problem that has grown considerably in recent years due to the fact that a large part of the population carries out economic operations through its devices computers, fixed and mobile.
The figures for 2020 and 2021 are lower, but they are also marked by a fact, namely the Covid-19 pandemic, which kept a large part of the population inside their homes, first through strict confinement between March and May 2020, and then with mobility restrictions, curfews and perimeter closures which, by restricting freedom of movement, reduced the possibility of certain crimes.
In 2021, there were 23,307, compared to 21,938 the previous year. They represented a notable brake, because in 2019, the year immediately before the pandemic, they reached 25,225. They were much higher than in the years of restrictions, but lower than today. The difference is 24 percent in five yearswhich runs from 2018 to 2023, the last year with complete data. There are 6,000 additional crimes that have increased, and in this area, those committed via the Internet play a particular role.
If in 2016 the total number of crimes did not reach 24,000, in 2023, the last full year, they already exceeded 31,800.
Because the data from the Ministry of the Interior also highlights the flightsthefts up to a certain amount, which have always been among the most frequent crimes. In the first six months of this year 2024, 3,243 were recorded, which represents a decrease of 4.1 percent compared to the same period of the previous year.
In the whole of 2023, there were 6,751, which is 11% more than in 2022, when there were 6,072. In both cases, the percentage of what thefts represent in the total amount of crimes is the same, 21 percent, or one in five. So we have that between this type of flights and cybercrime accounts for almost half of all criminal offences recorded in Córdoba.
The evolution of flights in recent years has however seen a decline then a recovery approaching the previous figures, but not reaching them. In 2016, there were 7,700, while the following year they fell to 7,232, a decrease of 6.1 percent.
In 2018 there were already 6,773 and in 2019 they remained at 6,283, which shows a clear downward trend, also noticeable in the general figure. In 2020 and 2021, with the restrictionsit could only go down and it did: 1,044 and 1,010, while in 2022 and 2023 they already reached 6,072 and 6,751 respectively. Of course, the trend this year is a decrease of 4 percent.
Within the data of the Ministry of the Interior, the flights with force in homes, establishments and other types of facilities. Until June 30, 694 were recorded, five fewer than in the same period in 2023, and the vast majority of them were carried out inside homes. Throughout 2023, they were over 1,000, which worsens the figures for 2022.
