The number of criminal suspects recorded by police fell by 11 per cent in 2016, continuing a downward trend of the last decade, according to the statistics office CBS.

In 2016 270,000 suspects were implicated in around 182,000 offences, out of a total of 900,000 recorded crimes. The number of suspects was around twice as high in 2007.

The total number of recorded crimes fell by 5.1%, with vandalism and offences against property seeing the biggest reduction. Youth offending saw a sharper drop-off than adult offending, with under-18s responsible for 12% of crimes where a suspect was identified.

The lower number of criminal suspects had a knock-on effect in the courts, which handled 11% fewer cases in 2016, even though the prosecution service’s caseload only fell by 1%.

The CBS warned that it was difficult to draw hard conclusions about the crime rate from the figures, as some types of offences, such as cybercrime, go largely undetected.