With a crime rate of 132.4 per 1,000 people Cleveland, in North East England, had the highest crime rate of all the police force areas in England and Wales in 2023/24. High crime rates are evident in other areas of northern England, such as West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester at 121.7 and 117.7 respectively. In the English capital, London, the crime rate was 105.1 per 1,000 people. The lowest crime rate in England was in the relatively rural areas of Wiltshire in South West England, as well as North Yorkshire. Overall crime on the in England and Wales The number of crimes in England and Wales reached approximately 6.74 million in 2022/23, falling slightly to 6.66 million in 2023/24. Overall crime has been rising steadily across England and Wales for almost a decade, even when adjusted for population rises. In 2022/23, for example, the crime rate in England and Wales was 93.6, the highest since 2006/07. When compared with the rest of the United Kingdom, England and Wales is something of an outlier, as crime rates for Scotland and Northern Ireland have not followed the same trajectory of rising crime. Additionally, there has been a sharp increase in violent crimes and sexual offences since the mid-2010s in England and Wales. While theft offences have generally been falling, the number of shoplifting offences reached a peak of 440,000 in 2023/24. Troubled justice system under pressure Alongside rising crime figures, many indicators also signal that the justice system is getting pushed to breaking point. The percentage of crimes that are solved in England and Wales was just 5.7 percent in 2023, with sexual offences having a clearance rate of just 3.6 percent. Crimes are also taking far longer than usual to pass through the justice system. In 2023, it took an average of 676 days for a crown court case to reach a conclusion from the time of the offence. This is most likely related to the large backlog of cases in crown courts, which reached over 62,200 in 2023. Furthermore, prisons in England and Wales are dangerously overcrowded, with just 1,458 spare prison places available as of June 2024.

There has been little research on United States homicide rates from a long-term perspective, primarily because there has been no consistent data series on a particular place preceding the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), which began its first full year in 1931. To fill this research gap, this project created a data series on homicides per capita for New York City that spans two centuries. The goal was to create a site-specific, individual-based data series that could be used to examine major social shifts related to homicide, such as mass immigration, urban growth, war, demographic changes, and changes in laws. Data were also gathered on various other sites, particularly in England, to allow for comparisons on important issues, such as the post-World War II wave of violence. The basic approach to the data collection was to obtain the best possible estimate of annual counts and the most complete information on individual homicides. The annual count data (Parts 1 and 3) were derived from multiple sources, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports and Supplementary Homicide Reports, as well as other official counts from the New York City Police Department and the City Inspector in the early 19th century. The data include a combined count of murder and manslaughter because charge bargaining often blurs this legal distinction. The individual-level data (Part 2) were drawn from coroners' indictments held by the New York City Municipal Archives, and from daily newspapers. Duplication was avoided by keeping a record for each victim. The estimation technique known as "capture-recapture" was used to estimate homicides not listed in either source. Part 1 variables include counts of New York City homicides, arrests, and convictions, as well as the homicide rate, race or ethnicity and gender of victims, type of weapon used, and source of data. Part 2 includes the date of the murder, the age, sex, and race of the offender and victim, and whether the case led to an arrest, trial, conviction, execution, or pardon. Part 3 contains annual homicide counts and rates for various comparison sites including Liverpool, London, Kent, Canada, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco.

London's Metropolitan Police is by far the largest police force in the United Kingdom with 34,315 officers in 2024. At 16,356 officers, the Scottish police force has the second-largest force in terms of officer numbers, followed by Greater Manchester police force, which had 8,141 officers that year. Although the Metropolitan Police are responsible for policing most of Greater London, the City of London Police force covers the historic center of London, which is around one square mile in size, and numbered 995 officers in 2024. Crime in the UK In 2023/24 there were approximately 6.66 million crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales, compared with 6.74 million in 2022/23, which was the highest number of crimes recorded in a reporting year since 2002/03. Although crime declined from the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s, there has been a noticeable increase in crimes from 2014/15 onwards. In terms of the crime rate, England and Wales had the highest in the United Kingdom, at 89.7 offences per one thousand people, compared with 55 in Scotland, and 52.3 in Northern Ireland. Cuts to policing reversed in recent years Between 2010 and 2017, the number of police officers in the UK fell from 172,000 officers to just 150,000. During this same period, the London Metropolitan Police saw officer numbers decline by around 2,000 officers. The fall in police personnel was a result of UK-wide funding cuts, during this time period, with police expenditure falling from 19.3 billion in 2009/10 to 16.35 billion by 2013/14. This policy has since been reversed, with the last UK government recruiting officers and generally spending more on the police service. As of 2024, there were 170,500 police officers in the UK, and government expenditure on the police service was 27.3 billion British pounds.