Fresh data from Portugal’s Security Coordination Bureau (GCS) released this week shows that in 2016, general and violent crime dropped by 6.5 percent and 10.5 percent respectively, further extending a downward trend noted since 2008.
That trend was only briefly interrupted last year when a 1.3 percent rise in general crime was registered.
However, in contrast, extortion, mostly committed over the internet, and IT scams grew significantly, by 70 percent and 20 percent respectively.
These provisional figures were compiled based on cases reported up until the third quarter of 2016 and published in a report analysing crime in Portugal which was presented this week by the country’s highest-ranking police officials who make up the GCS.
According to the report, which was covered in depth by newspaper Diário de Notícias (DN), common crimes that cause public unrest, such as muggings, car thefts and establishment hold-ups have all dropped this year. This, the police chiefs said, could in large part be due to a greater police presence on the streets, heavier armed and better equipped forces, police reinforcements in critical areas, and a greater agglomeration of people.
DN reports that with prisons currently being overloaded with more violent criminals, police are now facing new trends in crime, which no longer take place on streets, but rather online.
Extortion, particularly sexual bribery, or sextortion, as it has become known, and IT crimes such as illegally accessing bank details, sabotage and swindling, have both risen markedly, as have cases of blackmail.
“Internet crime requires lots of specific research due to its trans-nationality and the great difficulty of collecting evidence”, stressed the head of the PJ police’s cybercrime department, which was created in 2012 to tackle the growing crimes.