The crime rate of England and Wales in 2023/24 was 110.5 crimes per thousand people, when fraud and computer misuse was included and 89.7 when it was excluded. This represents one of the highest crime rates in this time period, and a significant increase when compared to the mid-2010s.

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

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.

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.

There were approximately 6.66 million crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales in 2023/24, compared with approximately 6.74 million in the 2022/23 reporting year. Although a slight decline on the previous reporting year, 2023/24 saw the second-highest number of crimes recorded in the provided time period, with the low number of crimes reported in 2020/21 due to the COVID-19 restrictions in place throughout that reporting year. In general, the number of crime offenses in England and Wales has been rising at a fairly rapid pace, increasing from just over four million in 2013/14, to the high seen in 2022/23. Reversing the trend after a decade of cuts The rise in crime during this period has led to serious questions about how to reverse this trend, and if the police have enough manpower and resources to counter it. Due to austerity measures pursued by British governments after 2010, police forces were forced to cut officer numbers in successive years between 2010 and 2017, resulting in a net decrease of around 22,000 officers. In more recent years, public sector expenditure on the police force has started to increase and reached 25.2 billion British pounds in 2022/23, while officer numbers reached 171,000 in 2023, the highest figure since 2010. Crime rates highest in Northern England In 2022/23, the police force area with the highest crime rate in this year was Cleveland, located in the North East of England, which had approximately 147.7 crimes per 1,000 people, compared with the England and Wales average of 93.6. Among UK regions, the three regions of Northern England; Yorkshire, the North East, and the North West, had the highest crime rates of any regions. The region of England with the lowest crime rate was the South West, at 69.9 crimes per 1,000 people.

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

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 were approximately 2.01 million violent crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales in 2023/24, compared with almost 2.11 million offences in the previous reporting period.

Firearms, knife- and sharp-instrument offences, offences involving a corrosive substance, hospital admissions for assault with sharp objects, fraud, offences flagged as domestic abuse-related, corruption, anti-social behaviour, perceptions, and non-notifiable incidents.

This dataset provides police recorded crime counts and related resident population estimates for all violence and burglary (housebreaking in Scotland) (data on burglary and violence is provided separately) for the financial years 2004-5 to 2015-16. This is a longitudinal data set with data aggregated by year to financial years (1st April in one year to 31st March in following year) for the years 2004-5 to 2015-16 inclusive. Data runs from 1st April 2004 as this is the date from which all nations had national crime recording standards for police recorded crime. The dataset has been prepared to provide comparative data at the regional level - in this case - local authority districts for Scotland, and Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs) as at 2015-16 in England and Wales. Data for England and Wales are directly comparable. As Scotland, and England and Wales, have different legal systems, and different police crime recording standards, the recorded crime definitions of violence and burglary (housebreaking) used here aim to provide the best available comparable data between the countries, but precise definitions of violence and burglary (housebreaking) used in the Scottish, and the English and Welsh, legal systems are not the same. Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs), previously also called Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships, are comprised of one or more English or Welsh district or unitary local authorities. Over time, some CSPs have merged and / or added additional local authorities to the partnership, this may also lead to change of partnership name. The CSPs used here are those current as listed in Home Office open data tables on recorded crime for 2015-16 (downloaded in February 2017). Police recorded crime data are data reported to and recorded by the police. Not all crimes are reported to the police, and not all reported crime are subsequently recorded. Data used from England Wales to derive this dataset do not have National Statistics status, this was withdrawn in January 2014. Data for Scotland had National Statistics status withdrawn in July 2014 but reinstated in September 2016. These data are derived entirely from open data as defined in the Open Government Licence version 3 (OGL3).

The Applied Quantitative Methods Network (AQMeN) Phase II is a Research Centre that aims to develop a dynamic and pioneering set of projects to improve our understanding of current social issues in the UK and provide policy makers and practitioners with the evidence to build a better future. Three principal cross-cutting research strands will exploit existing high-quality data resources: Education and Social Stratification will focus on social class differences in entry to, progression in and attainment at tertiary education and how they affect individuals' labour market outcomes and their civic participation; Crime and Victimisation will explore the dramatic change in crime rates in Scotland and other jurisdictions and examines the determinants and impact of criminal careers amongst populations of offenders; and Urban Segmentation and Inequality which will create innovative new measures of social segmentation and combine these with cutting-edge longitudinal and sorting-model techniques to explore the causes of neighbourhood segmentation, household location choice and neighbourhood inequalities. Five additional projects will focus on the referendum on Scottish independence, location dynamics and ethnicity and exploiting existing datasets. The research will fed into training activities and knowledge exchange events aimed at boosting capacity in quantitative methods amongst the UK social science community.

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.

Annual data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and metal theft offences recorded by the police, including demographic and offence type breakdowns and time series data.

In 2023/24, the arrest rate for people in England and Wales varied by self-identified ethnicity. People who identified as Black or Black British had an arrest rate of 17 per 1,000 population, compared with ten for people who identified as white, and eight who identified as Asian or Asian British.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

Background:
The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), previously known as the British Crime Survey (BCS), has been in existence since 1981. The survey traditionally asks a sole randomly selected adult, in a random sample of households, details pertaining to any instances where they, or the household, has been a victim of a crime 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). Most of the questionnaire is completed in a face-to-face interview in the respondent's home; these variables are contained within the non-victim form (NVF) data file. Since 2009, the survey has been extended to children aged 10-15 years old; one resident of that age range has also been selected at random from the household and asked about incidents where they have been a victim of crime, and other related topics. The first set of children's data, covering January-December 2009, had experimental status, 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 dataset. Further information 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.

Self-completion data:
A series of questions on drinking behaviour, drug use and intimate personal violence (including stalking and sexual victimisation) are administered to adults via a self-completion module which the respondent completes on a laptop computer. Children aged 10-15 years also complete a separate self-completion questionnaire. The questions are contained within the main questionnaire documents, but the data are not available with the main survey; they are available only under Secure Access conditions. Lower-level geographic variables are also available under Secure Access conditions to match to the survey.

History:
Up to 2001, the survey was conducted biennially. From April 2001, interviewing was carried out continually and reported on in financial year cycles and the crime reference period was altered to accommodate this change. The core sample size has increased from around 11,000 in the earlier cycles to over 40,000. Following the National Statistician's Review of Crime Statistics in June 2011 the collation and publication of Crime Statistics moved to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) from 1st April 2012, and the survey changed its name to the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) accordingly.

Scottish data:
The 1982 and 1988 BCS waves were also conducted in Scotland. The England and Wales data for 1982 and 1988 are held at the UKDA under SNs 1869 and 2706, but the Scottish data for these studies are held separately under SNs 4368 and 4599. Since 1993, separate Scottish Crime and Justice Surveys have been conducted, see the series web page for more details.

New methodology for capping the number of incidents from 2017-18
The CSEW datasets available from 2017-18 onward are based upon 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 data sets are not, comparability has been lost with previous years. More information can be found in the 2017-18 User Guide and the article ‘Improving victimisation estimates derived from the Crime Survey for England and Wales’. ONS intend to publish all micro data back to 1981 with incident data based on the 98th percentile cap later in 2019.

The main CSEW 1996-2020 Secure Access dataset (SN 7280) includes:

• the adult and child data also held in the standard End User Licence (EUL) version
• adult self-completion modules on drinking behaviour, drug use, stolen goods, children's self-completion modules and sexual identity and low-level geography variables formerly held under Special Licence access conditions (please note that not all modules occur for each year - see the survey year's documentation for details)
• hate crime variables HATEMT3A-HATEMT3I and HATEPS3A-HATEPS3I from the Victim Form
• the interpersonal violence (IPV) data (comprising the modules on domestic violence, sexual victimisation and stalking)

Users who do not require access to the modules noted above should apply for the EUL version. The Secure Access version has more restrictive access conditions than the standard EUL version - see the 'Access' tab. All studies in the series can be viewed from the Crime Survey for England and Wales series webpage.

This study also includes the following...