Trends in Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) crime and Home Office police recorded crime for England and Wales, by offence type. Also includes more detailed data on crime such as violence, fraud and anti-social behaviour.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) asks a sole adult in a random sample of households about their, or their household's, experience of crime victimisation in the previous 12 months. These are recorded in the victim form data file (VF). A wide range of questions are then asked, covering demographics and crime-related subjects such as attitudes to the police and the criminal justice system (CJS). These variables are contained within the non-victim form (NVF) data file. In 2009, the survey was extended to children aged 10-15 years old; one resident of that age range was also selected from the household and asked about their experience of crime and other related topics. The first set of children's data covered January-December 2009 and is held separately under SN 6601. From 2009-2010, the children's data cover the same period as the adult data and are included with the main study.

The Telephone-operated Crime Survey for England and Wales (TCSEW) became operational on 20 May 2020. It was a replacement for the face-to-face CSEW, which was suspended on 17 March 2020 because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. It was set up with the intention of measuring the level of crime during the pandemic. As the pandemic continued throughout the 2020/21 survey year, questions have been raised as to whether the year ending March 2021 TCSEW is comparable with estimates produced in earlier years by the face-to-face CSEW. The ONS Comparability between the Telephone-operated Crime Survey for England and Wales and the face-to-face Crime Survey for England and Wales report explores those factors that may have a bearing on the comparability of estimates between the TCSEW and the former CSEW. These include survey design, sample design, questionnaire changes and modal changes.

More general information about the CSEW may be found on the ONS Crime Survey for England and Wales web page and for the previous BCS, from the GOV.UK BCS Methodology web page.

History - the British Crime Survey

The CSEW was formerly known as the British Crime Survey (BCS), and has been in existence since 1981. The 1982 and 1988 BCS waves were also conducted in Scotland (data held separately under SNs 4368 and 4599). Since 1993, separate Scottish Crime and Justice Surveys have been conducted. Up to 2001, the BCS was conducted biennially. From April 2001, the Office for National Statistics took over the survey and it became the CSEW. Interviewing was then carried out continually and reported on in financial year cycles. The crime reference period was altered to accommodate this.

Secure Access CSEW data
In addition to the main survey, a series of questions covering drinking behaviour, drug use, self-offending, gangs and personal security, and intimate personal violence (IPV) (including stalking and sexual victimisation) are asked of adults via a laptop-based self-completion module (questions may vary over the years). Children aged 10-15 years also complete a separate self-completion questionnaire. The questionnaires are included in the main documentation, but the data are only available under Secure Access conditions (see SN 7280), not with the main study. In addition, from 2011 onwards, lower-level geographic variables are also available under Secure Access conditions (see SN 7311).

New methodology for capping the number of incidents from 2017-18
The CSEW datasets available from 2017-18 onwards are based on a new methodology of capping the number of incidents at the 98th percentile. Incidence variables names have remained consistent with previously supplied data but due to the fact they are based on the new 98th percentile cap, and old datasets are not, comparability has been lost with years prior to 2012-2013. More information can be found in the 2017-18 User Guide (see SN 8464) and the article ‘Improving victimisation estimates derived from the Crime Survey for England and Wales’.

CSEW Historic back series – dataset update (March 2022)

From January 2019, all releases of crime statistics using CSEW data adopted a new methodology for measuring repeat victimisation (moving from a cap of 5 in the number of repeat incidents to tracking the 98th percentile value for major crime types).

To maintain a consistent approach across historic data, all datasets back to 2001 have been revised to the new methodology. The change affects all incident data and related fields. A “bolt-on” version of the data has been created for the 2001/02 to 2011/12 datasets. This “bolt-on” dataset contains only variables previously supplied impacted by the change in methodology. These datasets can be merged onto the existing BCS NVF and VF datasets. A template ‘merge’ SPSS syntax file is provided, which will need to be adapted for other software formats.

For the seventh edition...

Stalking experienced by women and men, including numbers, type and personal characteristics, based upon annual findings from the Crime Survey for England and Wales.

These data tables contain estimates from the British Crime Survey (BCS) broken down by a number of demographic characteristics they can be used to calculate the rates and numbers of different crime types, as well as levels of certain perception measures also covered by the BCS. From April 2012, responsibility for the publication of crime statistics will move from the Home Office to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Police recorded crime figures by Police Force Area and Community Safety Partnership areas (which equate in the majority of instances, to local authorities).

The crime rate in the United Kingdom was highest in England and Wales in 2023/24, at 89.7 crimes per 1,000 people, compared with Scotland which had 55 crimes per 1,000 population and Northern Ireland, at 52.3 crimes per 1,000 people. During this time period, the crime rate of England and Wales has usually been the highest in the UK, while Scotland's crime rate has declined the most, falling from 93.4 crimes per 1,000 people in 2002/03, to just 52.3 by 2021/22. Overall crime on the rise In 2022/23 there were approximately 6.74 million crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales, with this falling to 6.66 million in 2023/24. Although crime declined quite significantly between 2002/03 and 2013/14, this trend has been reversed in subsequent years. While there are no easy explanations for the recent uptick in crime, it is possible that reduced government spending on the police service was at least partly to blame. In 2009/10 for example, government spending on the police stood at around 19.3 billion pounds, with this cut to between 17.58 billion and 16.35 billion between 2012/13 and 2017/18. One of the most visible consequences of these cuts was a sharp reduction in the number of police officers in the UK. As recently as 2019, there were just 150,000 police officers in the UK, with this increasing to 171,000 by 2023. A creaking justice system During the period of austerity, the Ministry of Justice as a whole saw its budget sharply decline, from 9.1 billion pounds in 2009/10, to just 7.35 billion by 2015/16. Although there has been a reversal of the cuts to budgets and personnel in the justice system, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the depleted service hard in 2020. A backlog of cases grew rapidly, putting a strain on the ability of the justice system to process cases quickly. As of the first quarter of 2023, for example, it took on average 676 days for a crown court case to go from offence to conclusion, compared with 412 days in 2014. There is also the issue of overcrowding in prisons, with the number of prisoners in England and Wales dangerously close to operational capacity in recent months.

Abstract (en): The primary purpose of the British Crime Survey was to estimate how many of the public in England and Wales are victims of selected types of crime over a year, describing the circumstances under which people become victims, and the consequences of crime for victims. Other aims included providing background information on fear of crime among the public and on public contact with the police. Respondents were asked a series of screening questions to establish whether or not they or their households had been victims of relevant crimes during the one-year reference period. They were then asked a series of very detailed questions about the incidents they reported. Basic descriptive background information on respondents and their households was collected to allow analysis of the sorts of people who do and do not become victims. Information was also collected on other areas which were of intrinsic interest and which could usefully be related to experience as a victim, namely, fear of crime, contact with the police, lifestyle, and self-reported offending. People aged 16 and over living in private households in England and Wales and whose addresses appear in the electoral registers. Multistage probability sample using electoral registers as the frame. 2006-01-18 File CB8672.PDF was removed from any previous datasets and flagged as a study-level file, so that it will accompany all downloads. This collection offers three distinct representations of British Crime Survey data. They are Parts 1-3, Part 4, and Part 5. Part 1 consists of data captured on the Main Questionnaire. Part 2 represents data from the Victim Form. Part 3 consists of data collected via the Followup Questionnaire. Parts 1-3 are documented with SPSS Control Cards and the nonnumeric codes "-1" and "-2" are used to represent missing data. Part 4 is a hierarchically structured file consisting of 5 cards per resondent containing data from the Main Questionnaire (approx. 188 variables), followed by 5 cards per Victim Form (approx. 290 variables) for up to four Victim Forms per respondent, followed by 5 cards containing data from the Followup Questionnaire (approx. 230 variables). Only respondents reporting incidents of victimization have Victim Forms. The Followup Questionnaire was administered to all respondents reporting incidents of victimization and to 2 in 5 other respondents. Part 5 is identical to Part 4 except that it has been "padded" by inserting blank cards so that there are thirty 80-column cards for each respondent. The codebook describes Parts 4 and 5 only. Hardcopy documentation describes interviews with 5,031 people in Scotland, however, data for Scotland are not included in this dataset.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The British Crime Survey 2007-2008: Teaching Dataset is based on the British Crime Survey, 2007-2008 (available from the UK Data Archive under SN 6066) and constitutes real data which are used by the Home Office and are behind many headlines. The teaching dataset is a subset, which has been subjected to certain simplifications and additions for the purpose of learning and teaching. (Note that the main British Crime Survey has now become the Crime Survey for England and Wales, but titles of older studies in the series remain the same.)

The main differences are:

• only respondents who completed Module B (attitudes to the Criminal Justice System) of the BCS, 2007-2008 are included
• the number of variables has been reduced
• weighting has been simplified
• a reduced codebook is provided
• additional continuous variables have been created (using factor analysis of pre-existing variables) in order to facilitate their use in quantitative methods classes

Further information is available in the study documentation (below) which includes a dataset user guide and additional notes for teachers.

Main Topics:

The main topics covered are:

• experience of crime
• perceptions of crime
• characteristics of local area
• attitudes to police and Criminal Justice System
• socio-demographics

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The British Crime Survey, 2000: X4L SDiT Teaching Dataset (BCS) is a stripped-down version of the full BCS 2000 study held as study number 4463 at the UK Data Archive. The dataset is drawn from the 'non-victim' BCS data and contains just 33 variables, some broadbanded to protect respondent confidentiality. The dataset forms part of a wider SDiT project, which is accessible via the X4L - SDiT (Survey Data in Teaching) project web site. This project aimed to improve data literacy for students of survey methods and statistics. The full teaching materials and outputs from the project are available in the documentation table of this record (see below).

The British Crime Survey (BCS) is one of the largest social surveys conducted in Britain. It is primarily a 'victimisation' survey, in which respondents are asked about the experiences of property crimes of the household (e.g. burglary) and personal crimes (e.g. theft from the person) which they themselves have experienced. (Note that the main British Crime Survey has now become the Crime Survey for England and Wales, but titles of older studies in the series remain the same.) Because members of the public are asked directly about victimisation, the BCS provides a record of the experience of crime which is unaffected by variations in the behaviour of victims about reporting the incident to the police, and variations over time and between places in the police practices about recording crime. The scope of the BCS goes well beyond the counting of criminal incidents, although it is for this estimate that it has become established as a definitive source of information. In order to classify incidents, the BCS collects extensive information about the victims of crime, the circumstances in which incidents occur and the behaviour of offenders in committing crimes. In this way, the survey provides information to inform crime reduction measures and to gauge their effectiveness. The BCS has been successful at developing special measures to estimate the extent of domestic violence, stalking and sexual victimisation, which are probably the least-reported to the police but among the most serious of crimes in their impact on victims.

Main Topics:

The main topics covered in the X4L dataset are fear of crime, assessment of police, and issues of 'crime and punishment'.

Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and Home Office police recorded crime data, by quarterly time periods.

Presents the most recent crime statistics from the British Crime Survey (BCS) and police recorded crime in England and Wales. Responsibility for the compilation and publication of all crime statistics (British Crime Survey and Police Recorded Crime) for England and Wales will transfer from the Home Office to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on 1 April 2012 as announced by the Home Secretary in July 2011. The ONS will publish for the first time on 19 April 2012.

Appendices to doctoral thesis.

Appendix A - Statistics from Chapter Five

Appendix B - Statistics from Chapter Six

Appendix C - Statistics from Chapter Seven

Appendix D - Statistics from Chapter Nine and Chapter Ten

Appendix E - Statistics from Chapter Eleven

Appendix F - Correspondence

Appendix G - ERG Terms of Reference and Confidentiality Agreement

Appendix H - Stop and Search Training Materials

In 2023/24 there were 25,205 crimes against public justice recorded by the police in Scotland, with the 2020/21 figure the highest for this type of crime since 2011/12, when there were 26,635 crimes of this type recorded.

Domestic abuse numbers, prevalence, types and attitudes experienced by women and men aged between 16 and 59 years and 60 to 74 years, based upon annual findings from the Crime Survey for England and Wales.

Presents the most recent crime statistics from the British Crime Survey and police recorded crime.

Source agency: Home Office

Designation: National Statistics

Language: English

Alternative title: Quarterly crime stats

Annual data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), including when and where incidents happened and the victim's perception of the incident.