On 25 July 2014, while discussing the new cabinet in parliamentary committees, MPs and government members also discussed crime statistics in the Legal Issues Committee. Eka Beselia stated: “Crime rates have not increased even after such an unprecedented amnesty releasing up to 60% of the prisoners. We were expecting the situation to change; however, to our surprise, the crime rate has decreased.”

FactCheck

took interest in this statement and verified its accuracy.

The Georgian Law on Amnesty, referred to by Eka Beselia, was published on 28 December 2012. Therefore, we shall start the assessment of crime statistics from January 2013. FactCheck has been researching crime statistics since August 2013; however, we could not finish the article due to a lack of comprehensive data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia. FactCheck wrote

about this problem earlier in the year.

In November 2012, the then Prime Minister of Georgia, Bidzina Ivanishvili, stated that the release of the prisoners would somewhat worsen the crime situation in the country. Later, in March 2013, the Netgazeti agency received detailed crime statistics from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. According to the data, crime rates increased by 59.7% in November 2012, by 40.7% in December, by 19.6% in January 2013 and by 15.7% in February – as compared to the respective months of 2011 and 2012.

On 19 March 2013, a journalist of the Netgazeti agency presented the aforementioned data to the then Minister of Internal Affairs of Georgia, Irakli Gharibashvili. The Minister said that he had no information about such data and would publish the statistics at the end of the month.

At the beginning of April 2013, the Ministry of Internal Affairs published the report of the first quarter of 2013. The statistics included the data from the investigation groups of the Ministry itself, the Prosecutor’s Office and other government structures. According to the data, the number of registered crimes increased by 1,675 (16.7%) in January-March 2013 as compared to the same period of 2012.

Time Period	2012			2013			+ Increase - Decrease
	Overall Registered	Solved	Percentage of Solved Crimes	Overall Registered	Solved	Percentage of Solved Crimes
January	3,266	733	22.44%	3,927	972	24.75%	+661 +20.24%
February	3,300	710	21.52%	3,818	826	21.63%	+518 +15.7%
January to February	6,530	1,712	26.22%	7,610	2,169	28.5%	+1080 +16.54%
March	3,525	773	21.9%	4,396	1,124	25.5%	+871 +24.7%
January to March	10,033	2,890	28.8%	11,708	3,837	32.7%	+1,675 +16.6%

Remark:

1. Statistics were prepared based upon a new methodology as of 8 April 2013.
2. The statistics include the data from the investigation groups of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Prosecutor’s Office and other government structures.

The first part of the remark says that the statistics were prepared based upon a new methodology. This new methodology is the electronic recording system of criminal proceedings. According to the Ministry, the Integrated Criminal Case Management System (so-called CRIMCASE) has been enacted since January 2013. The former Head of the Analytical Department of the Ministry of Justice of Georgia, Otar Kakhidze, does not agree with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and says that the system was enacted in May 2011.

In April, the Ministry of Internal Affairs published information about the differences between the old and new systems:

• Suspended criminal proceedings, regardless of the grounds for suspension, were not reflected in the unified system database before 2013.
• In the same period, the indictment document was the only ground to declare a crime case solved. Since the registration system lacked the mechanism of recognition of a case as solved without the component of guilt, they were not included in the unified consolidated report in order to prevent an unjustified increase of the number of unsolved cases.

According to the Ministry, as the new methodology has been in use since 2013, it should be taken into consideration that direct comparison of the data calculated by means of different methodology during the similar reporting period in 2012, 2011 and 2010 is not theoretically reasonable and does not provide a definite indication of trends and dynamics.

The report of the Ministry also includes a chart depicting the statistics of the same period calculated using the old methodology.

Time Period	2012	2013	+ Increase - Decrease
	Overall Registered	Overall Registered
January (101 cases)	3,266	3,826	+560 +17.1%
February (81 cases)	3,300	3,737	+437 +13.2%
January to February (276 cases)	6,530	7,334	+804 +12.3%
March (203 cases)	3,525	4,193	+668 +18.9%
January to March (641 cases)	10,033	11,067	+1,034 +10.3%

Remark:

 Statistics were prepared based upon the old methodology as of 8 April 2013.

The old methodology calculations also show that the number of registered crimes increased by 1,034 (10.3%) in January-March 2013 as compared to the same period of the previous year. Hence, the logical conclusion is that, regardless of the methodology, the number of recorded crimes was higher in January-March 2013 than in the same months of 2012.

On 25 July 2014, the Minister of Internal Affairs of Georgia also commented upon the increase in criminal activities after the amnesty. Mr Tchikaidze stated: “We had problems after the amnesty as the crime rates increased; however, I can assure you that as of now, the criminal situation is under complete control.” As we can see, the Minister of Internal Affairs himself confirms the increase in criminal activity after the amnesty.

After March 2013, the Ministry of Internal Affairs did not publish the crime statistics until July 2013. The data was published on 7 July 2013; however, it is a bit ambiguous as to whether or not the statistics include the data from all investigative bodies of the government structures or only from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. According to the data, there were 4,126 crimes less in 2013 as compared to the same period of 2012 which constitutes a 20% decrease in criminal activity.

Various non-governmental organisations (the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI), JumpStart Georgia) and media (Netgazeti, Tabula

and Rustavi2) expressed their doubts about the statistics and requested detailed data from the Ministry. The requested comprehensive data was provided in May and June 2014 only. The statistics received were quite different from the data published in 2013; however, the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, Levan Izoria, pointed out that the two statistics are different as the 2013 quarterly report included the data from all investigative bodies of the government structures (the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Main Prosecutor’s Office, Financial Police, etc.) while the 2014 statistics were based upon the data of the Ministry of Internal Affairs alone.

According to the 2014 statistics, the number of recorded crimes has decreased from January to May and from January to June 2014 as compared to the same periods of 2013. As there still are doubts about the credibility of these statistics, FactCheck

is looking for additional information. In order to obtain information and make it available for the public, we are also trying to meet the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr Izoria.

FactCheck

also contacted the author of the statement, Eka Beselia, who told us that her statement was based upon the statistics published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in May and June 2014. In order to assess the influence of the amnesty upon crime rates, one needs to examine the criminal situation before and after the amnesty. As pointed out earlier, the statistics published by the Ministry in May and June 2014 include data both from 2013 and 2014. As the general amnesty took place in December 2012, it would be sensible to compare the 2012 and 2013 crime rates. Therefore, for our conclusion to be more precise, we assessed the criminal situation immediately after the amnesty (comparing the first quarter of 2013 to the last quarter of 2012).

It should also be pointed out that it is impossible to compare the time period after the first quarter of 2013 as we do not have comprehensive statistics of these months. The data published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in July 2014 once again makes it clear that the numbers published by them in different periods do not correspond to each other. As pointed out earlier, the 2013 quarterly report of the Ministry included the data from all investigative bodies of government structures and Levan Izoria said that this was the reason why the numbers were different from those of the 2014 data. In July, August, September, October, November and December 2013 the Ministry published the overall crime statistics so it was unclear whether or not these were the data of the Ministry alone or other investigative structures as well. According to 2013 statistics, 16,590 cases of crime were recorded from January to July. The statistics published in July 2014 also featured the 2013 data for comparison. According to these data, 18,170 (and not 16,590) cases of crime were recorded from January to July 2013. If the 2013 statistics included the data from all investigative structures, the numbers must have been higher than that of the 2014 report as the latter represents only the data of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. If the 2013 report included only the data from the Ministry alone, it must have coincided with the data published in 2014. As we can see, the statistics of the first quarter of 2013 are problematic and are not recommended for the analysis of the amnesty results.

Conclusion In the given situation, the subject of FactCheck’s

research is not the crime situation in Georgia today. We still continue our study of this issue.

Eka Beselia’s statement concerned the situation of the immediate aftermath of the general amnesty. According to the data provided by the Ministry, crime rates increased in the first three months of the amnesty. The number of crimes grew by 20.2% in January, 15.7% in February and 24.7% in March. The Ministry did not publish the data for the next four months. According to the data published in July 2013, the crime rates decreased by 20% as compared to the same period of the previous year. Even though doubts still remain about the credibility of these data, it is clear that the crime rates increased in the first three months of the amnesty.

FactCheck concludes that Eka Beselia’s statement: “Crime rates have not increased even after such an unprecedented amnesty releasing up to 60% of the prisoners. We were expecting the situation to change; however, to our surprise, the crime rate has decreased,” is FALSE.