Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri has said in an interview that the number of police officers today is the highest it has been in 25 years.

"We not only increased the number of sworn police officers, but also the number of civilians working in the police force," he said in an interview with this media house.

Officers today also focus more on core police duties than they did in the past.  All of this allowed for the possibility of more specialisation within the force, Camilleri said.

The crime rate over the past years was decreased. "We went from 46 crimes per 1,000 people in 2004, to 30 crimes per 1,000 people in 2024. But crime has changed."

While in the past "96% of all crime was tied to outdoor crime, in 2024 that dropped to 64%. This shows that crime is changing. You can see the change through the crime reports we issue each year." The minister said that there are crimes today which, either in the past criminals didn't have the tools to commit, or are today being more frequently reported.

He mentioned domestic violence reports as an example of the latter. "This does not mean that domestic violence wasn't an issue in the past," he said, explaining that in the past people might have been dissuaded from seeking help, whereas today the message is seek help.

The hardest crimes to prevent today are financial crimes and cybercrime, the minister said.  "The police needed to become more specialised. Today we have the FCID, the Cybercrime unit, the Gender Based and Domestic Violence Unit."

Irregular migration

Turning to irregular migration, the minister was not comfortable with the situation the country was in when he first became Home Affairs Minister. "There were many arrivals, but that meant many deaths at sea. An irregular voyage has a high percentage of deaths at sea." 

He said that the best way to tackle both irregular voyages, deaths and to fight human traffickers was through improving returns.

He said that Malta is just and always helps refugees. "We have a legal and moral obligation to help refugees. But if you are not a refugee, then we have an obligation to take the hard decisions."

He said that majority of people using the central migration route are not persons who are granted asylum.

 As the country started returning more people to their country of origin, the number of arrivals began reducing, he said, highlighting it as a deterrent. 

He said that in the past he had received advice to "open the door," being told that they would "go to Europe and you would not have problems. But I am not comfortable adopting policies that lead to more people crossing, which would mean more people dying at sea, and so we emphasised a lot on returns. Comparing 2024 with 2019, the number of arrivals reduced by 93%. In the last years arrivals were very low, but then returns were high. We have among the highest rates of return in Europe. In 2023, the rate of return compared to arrivals was 83%, which is very high. Last year it was 68%, and this year until today, it is 88%, the highest we have ever had. So that is the deterrent."

Asked whether there is room for the government to start being more lenient in cases where an irregular migrant would have lived in the country for years, having built a life in Malta, he said that the decisions the government took over the past years have been legally correct, and also correct from a humanitarian viewpoint. "We cannot enact policies that in some way result in being an attraction for people to, when it comes to deciding whether to come by visa or cross the sea irregularly, choose the latter which means deaths."

He said that when irregular migrants come to Malta, they have a choice to undergo a voluntary return if they are not granted asylum.

The message it would send to irregular migrants would be not to cooperate with the State "because at some point they would regularise that person's position. That would mean more deaths at sea."

"Some who might have been here for years might say that they want to remain, but I cannot, to give a favourable decision for that person, result in a situation where more will die at sea." He said that his obligation as minister is to create policies that do not encourage people to cross the Mediterranean irregularly. 

The first part of this interview was carried yesterday.