Crime in Slovakia

Slovakia (population 5.4 million) is a Central European country with a history of relatively low crime. While crime became more widespread after the fall of communism in 1989, it remains low when compared to many other post-communist countries. According to the United States Department of Defense, Slovakia has a medium rate of crime.

Slovakia employs numerous law enforcement bodies and secret services in fighting crime, yet according to numerous opinion polls the Police together with the Secret Services are some of the least trusted institutions in the country.

In 2012, Slovakia had a murder rate of 1.4 per 100,000 population. There were a total of 75 murders in Slovakia in 2012.

Apart from the occasional mafia shooting, gun violence is rare in Slovakia. There are approximately 3,000 – 4,000 home burglaries and 7,000 – 8,000 car thefts in Slovakia each year. Together, there are around 15,000 cases of violent criminal acts (damage to victim's life or health) in Slovakia each year.

Slovak Republic is a party to the 1988 UN Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the 1972 Protocol thereto, and the 1971 UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances. Not only the manufacture and selling of certain drugs is illegal but also their possession. Slovak law does not differentiate between hard drugs and soft drugs and sentences can in theory be as harsh as life imprisonment.

Until the mid-1990s the drug situation in Slovakia remained somewhat stable; extensive small-scale illicit amphetamine production, no opium poppy cultivation, only minimal cannabis cultivation in private greenhouses and the country was already a key transit point for smuggling Asian heroin to Western Europe both via Ukraine and lying on the "Balkan route" from Turkey. Seizures of cocaine up to this point have been minimal and at this time Slovakia emerged as another crossroads for cocaine traffickers seeking new routes to Western Europe (Colombian traffickers have been smuggling cocaine through the neighboring Czech Republic since 1991). Because the banking sector in Slovakia was still in nascent stages at this time, drug money laundering operations were limited.

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