The Armenian police and other law-enforcement agencies registered a total of 37,612 criminal offenses in 2022.
According to a report released by the Office of the Prosecutor-General this week, “serious and particularly serious crimes” accounted for about 16 percent of them. This includes 58 premeditated murders, which were slightly down from 2021. Forty-five of them were solved, said the prosecutors.
Their report shows that Armenia crime rate was primarily pushed up by an almost 30 percent surge in “crimes of moderate severity.”
Drug trafficking cases presumably fall under this category. Their total number nearly doubled to 1,717 in 2022, highlighting a growing problem in a country not accustomed to widespread drug abuse.
The sharp rise in such cases is widely blamed on increasingly accessible synthetic drugs mainly sold through the internet and, in particular, the social media platform Telegram. Links to Telegram channels selling such drugs can now be seen painted on residential buildings and other public areas across Yerevan.
The alarming trend has prompted serious concern from not only opposition politicians but also pro-government lawmakers. The latter criticized the police for not preventing it when they met with Interior Minister Vahe Ghazarian in late February.
Armenian law-enforcement authorities have reported considerable annual increases in the overall crime rate since the 2018 “velvet revolution.” Critics claim that the country is not as safe as it used to be because its current government is softer on crime than the previous ones.
