NEW DATA SHOWS that the overwhelming majority of suspects in cases of violent crime reported in 2018 were men.

Figures on serious crime published today by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show that 98% of detected cases of sexually violent crimes involved male suspects that year.

Almost one in five suspected offenders for detected sexual violence crimes (19%) were under the age of 18 when the crime took place.

A person is recorded as a suspected offender when they have been deemed responsible for the crime by gardaí and have been issued with a sanction such as a charge, summons or caution.

The data also showed that 87.5% detected homicides for the same year involved male suspects. And 80.5% of suspected offenders of detected physical assaults and related offences in 2018 were men.

The CSO release also contained statistics relating to victims of crime in 2019. Although 59% of victims of reported physical assault and related offences were men that year, 81% of reported sexual violence incidents were women.

Meanwhile, almost a quarter 24% of sexual violence crime reported to gardaí in 2019 referred to incidents which took place ten or more years prior to being reported. 

And almost four out of every five (79.8%) detected sexual violence crimes involved a male suspected offender and a female victim.

The CSO data was sourced from Pulse, the garda’s administrative crime database.

It is the first time that statistics relating to suspected offenders of detected crime has been published.