Is crime rising in Greece? Police figures year by year, 2021–2024

By the SafetyMap team · Updated October 11, 2026

Recorded crime in Greece rose in 2022 and has fallen since, though not all the way back. In 2024 the police recorded about 716 property offences and 96 violent offences for every 100,000 residents, against 680 and 96 in 2021 — and vehicle theft and robbery are the offences that grew most.

Greece as a whole

Property crime — burglary and theft — went from 680 offences per 100,000 residents in 2021 to 803 in 2022, the highest of the four years, then to 775 in 2023 and 716 in 2024: 5% above 2021 and 11% below the 2022 peak. Violent crime moved less: 96 in 2021, 103 in 2022, a peak of 108 in 2023 and back to 96 in 2024.

The offences have not moved together. Vehicle theft rose from 140 to 171 per 100,000 (up 22%) and robbery from 23 to 27 (up 20%), with 2024 its highest year. Burglary fell from 126 to 119 and assault from 72 to 68, both down 5%. Intentional homicide stayed below one per 100,000 residents in every year.

Where it rose and where it fell

Between 2021 and 2024 recorded property crime rose in 25 of the 46 areas Eurostat reports — the 45 regional units outside Attica, and Attica as a whole — and fell in the other 21. Among the larger regional units it rose most in Corinthia (588 to 985, up 68%), Laconia and Messenia (284 to 476, up 68%), Larissa (159 to 245, up 54%) and Euboea (415 to 605, up 46%). It fell most in Achaea, the region of Patras (639 to 342, down 46%), Lasithi (224 to 119, down 47%) and Drama (136 to 71, down 48%).

The biggest swings are in the smallest regional units, where a handful of cases moves the rate a long way. In Evrytania, with about 20,000 residents, property crime went from 22 to 69 per 100,000 — roughly from four recorded offences in a year to fourteen.

The two metropolitan areas went opposite ways. Attica's property crime rose from 1,112 to 1,214 per 100,000 (up 9%); Thessaloniki's fell from 1,324 to 1,212 (down 8%), and its violent crime from 119 to 87 (down 27%). By 2024 the two recorded almost the same rate of property crime.

Among the islands, the Dodecanese — Rhodes and Kos — recorded more of both: property crime up 26%, and violent crime up 65%, from 65 to 107 per 100,000. Violent crime on Corfu rose by half, from 71 to 106, and property crime in Chania by 29%, from 195 to 251, while property crime fell by 23% in Heraklion (338 to 261) and by 10% in the Cyclades.

How to read a change

These are offences recorded by the police, not crimes committed: a change in how often people report a theft, or in how hard the police look for an offence, moves them too. A rate is per resident, so where visitors come and go in large numbers it can rise or fall with no change in local crime. Greece was under pandemic restrictions for the first months of 2021, so that year may understate an ordinary one: compare 2024 with 2022 and 2023 as well.

That is why the scores on the map use the mean of all four years rather than the latest one: in a small regional unit, one year can be a handful of cases. Every regional unit's page shows its own four years next to Greece's, as Chania's does, and how the scores work explains the rest.