“Iraq recorded a 15% decline in overall crime rates in 2024 compared to the previous year, with significant drops in violent crimes, theft, and drug-related offenses,” reports Shafaq Media.
The data showed a 22% drop in homicides, with 1,200 cases recorded in 2024 compared to 1,540 in 2023. Serious assaults also fell 18%, with 3,500 reported cases versus 4,270 the previous year.
Theft-related crimes also saw a decline. Home burglaries dropped 10%, with 8,000 cases recorded, down from 8,900 in 2023. Car thefts decreased by 14%, with 5,500 reported cases compared to 6,400 last year.
Drug-related offenses also declined, with trafficking cases falling 18% to 2,500 in 2024 from 3,050 a year earlier. Drug use cases dropped 15%, with 4,000 cases recorded compared to 4,700 in 2023.
Financial crimes followed the downward trend, with fraud cases dropping 20%, from 1,125 cases in 2023 to 900 this year. Corruption-related crimes, including bribery and embezzlement, fell 25%, with 1,200 cases recorded, down from 1,600 last year.
If this data is accurate, Iraq now has a lower murder rate than the United States and a lower rate of crimes like burglary. That was certainly not true a decade ago, when Iraq had a higher murder rate and was a more violent place.
Another web site indicates that Iraq has a higher rate of manslaughter than America, but a lower rate of premeditated murder. But a homicide victim is still just as dead even if it was manslaughter, rather than murder.
While Iraqis may not kill each other as often, it is still a dangerous place for Americans to visit. The U.S. State Department tells Americans to avoid the country, saying that “U.S. citizens in Iraq face high risks, including violence and kidnapping.”
Violent crime has been on a downward trend in most foreign countries, as improved forensics and crime fighting techniques makes it easier to catch and incarcerate criminals.
For example, the murder rate has declined dramatically in Italy in recent years, unlike the United States. Italy now has a much better rate of clearing homicides than the United States does. Rates of catching criminals are more important than sentence length in deterring crime, although longer sentences can also reduce crime, such as by incapacitating criminals who will re-offend if released. Nationally, 81.9% of all state prisoners released in 2008 were subsequently arrested within a decade, including 74.5% of those 40 or older at the time of their release. (See Bureau of Justice Statistics, Recidivism of Prisoners in 24 States Released in 2008: A 10-Year Follow-Up Period (2008-2018), pg. 4, Table 4).
In the U.S., shootings have increased, but this is masked by the fact that more shooting victims are surviving due to improved medical care, keeping the murder rate from rising. Professor Paul Robinson and Jeffrey Seaman explain this in their recent book Confronting Failures of Justice: Getting Away With Murder and Rape, available here.
