There is no specific crime/incident type by which incidents involving spiking may be recorded on PULSE1. In order to identify these incidents, it is necessary to look for relevant keywords within descriptions or incident narratives. Results are then manually reviewed to determine if they do indeed relate to an incident in which the injured party reports being spiked. ‘Spiking’ is a colloquial term used to describe a method of offending. Most commonly reports of spiking relate to a substance being added to a person’s drink without their knowledge. Reports have been received of a needle being used to inject the injured party or an undetermined method being used to give the injured party drugs without their knowledge or consent. All of these types of behaviour would involve the criminal offence of poisoning. This method may be used to facilitate committing other criminal offences.

Identifying reports of spiking: Incidents were selected based on narrative keyword searches of the PULSE incident categories of ‘Assaults’ and ‘Sexual Offences’ and all incidents of the PULSE incident type ‘Poisoning’ followed by manual examination and selection of incidents. This analysis includes all unique incidents of spiking as identified by the above methodology. Whilst every care has been taken to ensure all such incidents reported to Gardaí are included in this report, it is possible there are other incidents where the offender utilised spiking to commit the offence but this information is not recorded on PULSE using one of the identified keywords. Within the relevant incidents identified, there were 11 incidents reported to An Garda Síochána between 2010 and 2023 which occurred outside the jurisdiction. As there is no possibility of investigating these incidents, they are not included in the figures provided in this report.