Police in Faroe Islands review foreign criminal cases amid lack of ethnicity data

The police in the Faroe Islands have opted to manually review cases involving foreigners, as data on the ethnicity or nationality of individuals charged or convicted is not recorded. Consequently, there are no statistics available on the number of criminal offenses committed by Faroese citizens, only those involving foreigners.

In May 2023, a public broadcaster requested access to records of convictions for non-Danish citizens from the years 2018 to 2023. The police responded on May 10, indicating that such data could not be extracted from their electronic reporting system, which also does not document the nationality or ethnicity of those accused or convicted.

However, the police have conducted a manual review of cases typically resulting in deportation, which often involve serious crimes such as violence, rape, drug trafficking, and driving under the influence. This review aimed to determine if the number of cases involving foreigners has increased in recent years, as per the request’s findings.

The data revealed a steady rise in crimes involving individuals without Danish or Faroese personal identification numbers: 12 cases in 2019 and 2020, 14 in 2021, 21 in 2022, and 40 in 2023. When this story was initially reported, the significant increase in foreign cases made it difficult to conclude whether the proportion of crimes associated with newcomers had changed since the implementation of fast-track procedures.

Moreover, there is no basis for claiming that foreigners are involved in more criminal cases than Faroese citizens, as no figures exist to quantify the offenses committed by Faroese.