Sentences of minors for sexual crimes continue to rise. Last year, a total of 501 young people between 14 and 17 years old were convicted for this reason, 14.1% more than in 2021, according to the Statistics of Convictions made public today by the National Statistics Institute (INE), which confirms that the commission of sexual crimes by minors has not stopped growing in the last five years (with the exception of 2020, the year of confinement). If in 2017 there were 332 sexual crimes committed by minors, in 2022 almost double that number was recorded, 636. More than 60% of cases were sexual abuse and assaults on other young people under 16 years of age, although there have also been convictions for prostitution and corruption of minors, exhibitionism and sexual provocation, or harassment.
And along with the 501 minors (97% of them men), in 2022 there were 3,201 adults convicted of sexual crimes, 0.2% more than the previous year. In total they committed 3,835 crimes and one in five victims was under 16 years old. Of those 3,835 crimes, 1,458 were cases of sexual abuse and 462 were cases of sexual assault, of which 46 were considered rape.
Beyond sexual crimes, last year 308,624 adults were registered in the Central Registry of Sentences (9.4% more than in 2021), and 14,026 minors between 14 and 17 years old (3.2% more than in 2021). past year).
Both among adults and minors, eight out of ten convicted were men. The rate of people convicted per thousand inhabitants was 7.8 among those over 18 years of age and 6.8 among the population between 14 and 17 years of age, although with large differences by sex.
Among adults, the rate of convictions per thousand inhabitants is 13.1 in the case of men and 2.9 in women. In the case of minors, the rate is 10.6 among boys and 2.8 among girls, with clear differences according to age: the highest rate occurs in the group of 17-year-old males, which reaches 14 convicted per thousand inhabitants (3 in girls of that age).
The majority of convicted minors had Spanish nationality (79.3%), although the rate per thousand inhabitants is more than double among those of foreign nationality (14.3) than among those of Spanish nationality (6). In the case of adults, this same phenomenon is repeated: 74.6% of those convicted had a Spanish passport but the rate of those convicted with foreign nationality is 2.6 times higher than that of those with Spanish nationality, according to the INE.
Regarding the most frequent crimes, a quarter of the 426,416 committed by adults had to do with road safety, followed by injuries crimes (17%) and thefts (13.6%). In the case of minors, the crimes with the highest incidence were injuries (31.4% of the 25,822 criminal offenses committed), robberies (17.5%) and threats (8.6%).
Andalusia was the autonomous community with the most convicted minors registered in the Central Registry of Sentences of Criminal Responsibility of Minors, with 19% of the total, ahead of the Valencian Community (13.3%) and the Community of Madrid (12. 2%). However, if the population of each area is taken into account, it is the autonomous cities of Melilla and Ceuta (with 39.0 and 32.5, respectively) and the Balearic Islands (12.0) where the highest rates of convicted minors were recorded. per 1,000 inhabitants. On the other hand, Galicia (4.3), Catalonia (4.8) and the Basque Country (5.7) presented the lowest proportions of young people convicted.
Regarding adults, Andalusia was also the community in which the most convicted people were registered (19.4%), followed by Catalonia (16.4%) and the Valencian Community (12.5%). But the highest rates based on population were recorded in Melilla (14.3) and Ceuta (13.6), and the Balearic Islands (9.3), while Castilla-La Mancha (6.2), Galicia (6 .4) and Castilla y León (6.5) presented the lowest.
