Numbers in context

Multi-National Comparison

  Statistics & 

  Research

The National Commissioner of Police collects crime data from all the Police forces in Iceland. Police reported crime figures provide a good measure of trends in well-reported crimes, and can also be used to analyse local crime patterns. Police recorded crime figures do not provide the most accurate measure of crime, as they are susceptible to people''s reluctance to report some types of crime (such as sexual offences, or those they consider too trivial), and to changes in the way police have been asked to record crime. The data published here is all-inclusive, except for the "crimes per capita" overview. The term crime is used here in a broad definition, covering both major and minor offences.

Reservation: The introduction of a new Central Police Recording System in February 2005 means that figures before and after that date are not directly comparable. The new system and recording practices have mainly had an impact on figures for theft and traffic offences. Older registries have been updated accordingly, back to the year 2002. This new corrected version is issued here.

Photographs in the statistics section are the courtesy of photo.is sf.