Joe Giglio has dismissed an academic report that reported a marked decline in Malta’s crime rate as “cheap propaganda”, saying the findings do not match public perceptions.

The Nationalist Party MP and Home Affairs spokesperson told parliament that he had no trust in the CrimeMalta Observatory report, which earlier this month released figures for reported crimes in 2022.

Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri, Giglio said, “must decide whether he wants to settle for the cheap propaganda of statistics, or acknowledge that sentiment out there does not match those figures”.

The CrimeMalta report found that Malta registered its lowest crime rate in almost 20 years last year, with police receiving roughly 9,000 fewer crime reports in 2022 than they would have if the crime rate remained fixed at 2004 levels.

But Giglio said he had little time for the report and its findings because it did not tally with what society feels.

“Public sentiment does not match these figures,” he said. “People out there want to feel comfortable in their homes, roads, workplaces and streets. They want peace of mind that their children will not be attacked, that their elderly loved ones will not be the victims of violent attacks,” the PN MP said.

Giglio also cited a MaltaToday survey released earlier this month, which found that “justice and criminality” is the thing most citizens (27.6 per cent) are worried about.

“We live and experience this reality every day,” Giglio told parliament.

The MaltaToday survey combined “justice, the law courts and criminality” together into a single category, making it difficult to extrapolate which of those three issues respondents were most concerned about. 

Giglio also noted that a number of questions he asked when the report was first published have so far been ignored by the Home Affairs Minister.

Among the issues raised by Giglio are whether the CrimeMalta report takes into account traffic incidents – which the PN MP said “are crimes in and of themselves” – and whether the report takes into consideration the fact that certain acts which were, until recently, crimes are now legal.

He cited the liberalisation of cannabis laws as a case in point, saying by way of example that the “thousands” of charges for simple cannabis possession that used to be registered are now no longer crimes.

“When we compare crime rates between today and the past, are we taking this into account, or are we playing with the figures to fool people?” the PN MP, who is a criminal lawyer by profession, asked.

He said the government had ignored him when he first raised these issues some weeks ago in parliament and has yet to answer those questions. 

The CrimeMalta report, which has been issued annually since 2016, is based on reports of crime made to the Malta Police Force and compiled by criminologist Saviour Formosa.

Formosa maps crime across Malta and Gozo using geographic information systems – something that is not yet done by national authorities themselves.

The 2022 report found that the number of theft reports has been reduced by more than half over the past two decades.

Reports of prostitution, arson, attempted offences, forgery and bodily harm have also dropped since 2012.

By contrast, crimes related to drugs, sexual offences, domestic violence, threats of violence, perjury, fraud and computer misuse have all been on the rise over the past two decades. 

Malta's homicide rate has remained largely stable over that time period, with a rate of around 1.7 murders per 100,000 persons.