The State Security Forces learned during the first quarter of 2023 of a total of 3,037 criminal offenses in La Rioja, a figure that places the crime rate at 37.9 known criminal events per thousand inhabitants, according to the corresponding Crime Balance for the first three months of this year, published today on the website of the Ministry of the Interior.
La Rioja therefore maintains a low crime rate and continues to be the sixth most secure autonomous community, with 12 points below the national average, which was 49.8.
Increase in strength
The ranks of National Police and Civil Guard in La Rioja amount to 1,614 personnel, reaching, in this way, the highest number of national police and civil guards in the autonomous community since 2016, which was 1,477.
Therefore, the variation between 2016 and 2023 is 137 more total troops, which means a 9.3% increase in troops.
Specifically, the reinforcement in this period has been 91 civil guards (+7.5%), reaching 1,301, and 46 national police officers (+17.2%), with 313 personnel at present.
For all these reasons, the number of police officers in La Rioja per thousand inhabitants in 2023 is 5, up from 4.7 in 2016.
Typology of crimes
This Crime Balance shows the evolution of criminal offenses registered throughout the past year by the National Police and Civil Guard in La Rioja. As a statistical novelty, and to have a better X-ray to deal with this phenomenon, it includes a specific breakdown on cybercrime.
This statistical effort provides more complete information in line with the real evolution of criminality in Spain, affected by the growing penetration and use of the Internet for some years now, which has caused a strong transition of criminal reality between conventional or traditional criminality.
Thus, the total number of criminal offenses registered in La Rioja in the period January to March 2023 adds a total of 3,037 crimes, of which 2,351 (77.4 percent of the total) correspond to the category of conventional criminality, which includes all forms of crime not committed in cyberspace. As for cybercrime, the autonomous community registers a total of 686 criminal offenses counted, 22.6% of the total.
Clarified criminal offenses and arrests
With regard to the clarified criminal offenses, the first quarter of 2023 ended with a positive variation of 15 percent compared to the period between January and March of the previous year. In this way, the National Police and Civil Guard clarified 1,299 criminal offenses in La Rioja, up from 1,130 in this same period in 2022.
According to these data, the percentage of clarified criminal offenses in the first quarter of 2023 was 42.9%.
In addition, arrests and investigations by the State Security Forces in La Rioja increased by 7.4 percent, going from 815 January to March 2022 to 957 in these three months in 2023. Therefore, the rate of arrests and investigations by the Security Forces and Corps in the autonomous community for every 1,000 criminal offences is 315.
Safety indicators in municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants
The Crime Balance for the first quarter of 2023 includes data on the evolution of the registered criminal offenses of Logroño and Calahorsa, municipalities in Rioja that exceed 20,000 inhabitants.
Thus, the Rioja capital has a crime rate of 36.3 with a total of 1,387 known crimes, 1,090 corresponding to conventional crime and 297 to cybercrime.
This crime rate is higher than that recorded at the end of March 2022, where it reached 35.1.
For its part, Calsalvo recorded a crime rate of 55.4 from January to March 2023 compared to 51.1 in the same period in 2022. Both conventional criminality and cybercrime are on the rise in Calahorsa. In total, from January to March, the conventional one amounted to 293 known criminal offenses and 65 cybercrime offenses in 2023, while in 2022 it was 224 and 29, respectively.