The dark side of Maltese crime

Malta is a relatively safe country on paper, but with its total of 182,034 reported crimes from 1998 to 2008, it is not exactly a Garden of Eden. Malta has a declining number of crimes being reported, going down from 18,579 in 2005 to 13,804 in 2008, having previously gone up from 15,771 in 1998 to the 2005 figure.

The later years’ trend exhibits diverse realities; increased and highly efficient police intervention, a realistic and muted public interest to report crime, a generic lack of expectation that crimes will be solved, indifference in reporting specific crimes and myriad reasons as numerous as there are victims.

‘Dark figure of crime’ surveys prove that the numbers are actually higher and point to unreporting ranging even up to 50% in western societies. On a scale of dangerousness (a Formosa score model that places Malta at the different spatial level within a relative safety-dangerousness scale), Malta is deemed safe, though progressively decreasing in relative safety.