This statistic illustrates the number of children that identify as gang members in England, as of 2019. There are in total 27 thousand children identified as gang members in England. However, only 6.5 thousand of them are known to the respective authorities.

Knives or other sharp objects were involved in 46 percent of homicides in England and Wales in 2023/24, the most of any method of killing. Homicides which involved hitting or kicking without a weapon made up 17.4 percent of homicides, while shootings were identified as the method in 3.9 percent of homicides. Overall, there were 570 homicides in this reporting year, which was slightly lower than in the previous year, when there were 585, but noticeably higher than in 2014/15, when there were 504. Firearm homicides rare in England and Wales In 2023/24, there were 262 knife homicides in England and Wales, compared with 282 in 2021/22, which was the highest figure recently. By comparison, homicides which involved the use of a firearm were far less common, with just 22 in the 2023/24 reporting year. Due to strict gun laws and low levels of ownership, the UK contrasts starkly with the United States, which has struggled with high levels of gun violence. Although some specialist police officers in England and Wales are licensed to carry firearms, the majority of police officers are unarmed. In 2023/24, for example, there were just 5,861 armed police, out of around 147,746 police officers. Overall knife crime on the rise Like many other types of crime, knife crime offences in the 2010s started to decline at the start of the decade before creeping up again from 2014 onwards, reaching almost 52,000 in 2019/20. In London, where much of the media’s attention on knife crime is focused, there were 15,928 knife crime offences alone in 2019/20. Although this fell during subsequent reporting years, which were influenced by COVID-19 restrictions, it remains to be seen if the trend will continue. In 2023/24, the number of knife offences in the capital was higher than in any other year since 2019/20.

Raw data on crime supplied by the Metropolitan Police Service and the Mayors Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC).

Pan-London data includes:

- Total Notifiable Offences

- Total Victim-based crime (and Sanctioned Detection Rates)

- MOPAC Priority offences (*)

- Violence against the Person

- Violence with injury (VWI)* (and SDR)

- Serious Youth Violence

- Female victims of robbery & Violence with Injury

- Rape

- Knife Crime (and SDR)

- Knife Crime with Injury

- Gun Crime (and SDR)

- Gun Crime with firearm discharged

- Gang violence indicator

- Dog Attacks (and SDR)

- Homicide

- Sexual Offences

- Burglary (all)

- Burglary (residential)

- Robbery (all)

- Theft & Handling

- Theft from Person*

- Theft of Motor Vehicle*

- Theft from Motor Vehicle*

- Criminal Damage*

- Domestic Offences

- Homophobic Hate Victims

- Racist & Religious Hate Victims

- Faith Hate Victims

- Disability Hate Victims

- Stop & Search Totals (and related Arrest rate)

- Police Strengths - Officer/Staff/Special Constable/PCSO

- Satisfaction/Confidence in the Metropolitan Police Service (ease of contact/satisfaction with action taken/well-informed/fairly treated/overall satisfaction/overall confidence) NB. Quarterly data

- Crime-related calls to Police by category

- Anti-Social Behaviour-related calls to Police by category Borough data includes:

- MOPAC Priority offences - Police Strengths - Officer/Staff/Special Constable/PCSO

- Fear of crime ("to what extent are you worried about crime in this area?") NB. Quarterly data

NB. Action Fraud have taken over the recording of fraud offences nationally on behalf of individual police forces. This process began in April 2011 and was rolled out to all police forces by March 2013. Data for Greater London is available from Action Fraud here.

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 1,248 firearm offences recorded in London 2023/24, compared with 1,085 in 2022/23. Compared with previous years, there were far fewer offences in 2020/21 and 2021/22, which may have been due to the lockdowns brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. This is also reflected in London's overall crime rate, which fell from 102.4 crimes per 1,000 people in 2019/20, to 83.3 in 2020/21, before increasing to 92.8 in 2021/22, and 105.8 in the most recent reporting year. Firearm homicides rare in the UK The United Kingdom has some of the strictest gun laws in the world, resulting in relatively low levels of gun crime and firearm homicides. In 2022/23 just 4.9 percent of homicides in England and Wales were the result of shootings, compared with 85.7 percent in the United States in 2021. The most common method of killing for homicides in England and Wales was by far the use of a sharp instrument at 41.4 percent of homicides in the 2022/23 reporting year. London police budget rising In 2023/24 the budget for policing in London reached 4.53 billion British pounds, compared with 4.44 billion pounds in the previous financial year. This is the sixth-consecutive year of London's police budget increasing, compared with the period between 2013/14 and 2018/19, when it remained around 3.3 billion pounds, and was actually smaller than in 2012/13 when the budget was 3.62 billion. These budget increases have occurred alongside a recruitment drive for police officers. In 2023, there were 35,900 police officers in London, compared with just 31,087 in 2018.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The Offending, Crime and Justice Survey (OCJS) (also sometimes known as the Crime and Justice Survey), was the first national longitudinal, self-report offending survey for England and Wales. The series began in 2003, the initial survey representing the first wave in a planned four-year rotating panel study, and ended with the 2006 wave. A longitudinal dataset based on the four years of the study was released in 2009 (held at the Archive under SN 6345).

The OCJS was commissioned by the Home Office, with the overall objective of providing a solid base for measuring the prevalence of offending and drug use in the general population of England and Wales. The survey was developed in response to a significant gap in data on offending in the general population, as opposed to particular groups such as convicted offenders. A specific aim of the series was to monitor trends in offending among young people.

The OCJS series was designed as a 'rotating panel' which means that in each subsequent year, part of the previous year's sample was re-interviewed, and was augmented by a further 'fresh' sample to ensure a cross-sectional representative sample of young people. The aim of this design was to fulfil two objectives: firstly, to provide a solid cross-sectional base from which to monitor year-on-year measures of offending, drug use, and contact with the CJS over the four-year tracking period (2003-2006); and secondly, to provide longitudinal insight into individual behaviour and attitudinal changes over time, and to enable the Home Office to identify temporal links between and within the key survey measures.

The OCJS was managed by a team of researchers in the Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate. The Home Office commissioned BMRB Social Research and the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) to conduct the surveys jointly. Both organisations were involved in developing the surveys and, at each wave, the fieldwork was split between the two agencies.

OCJS 2006:
The 2006 OCJS sample comprised ‘panel’ respondents, who had been interviewed in one or more previous waves of the survey, and an additional ‘fresh’ sample of 10 to 25 year-olds, who had not been interviewed before. The total sample in 2006 consisted of 4,554 panel respondents followed up from previous waves of the survey and 799 new respondents in the fresh sample, resulting in 5,353 interviews overall. The 2006 OCJS was the last annual wave in the series.

The OCJS 2006 aimed to provide, as in previous years:

• measures of self-reported offending
• indicators of repeat offending
• trends in the prevalence of offending
• trends in the prevalence and frequency of drug and alcohol use
• evidence on the links between offending and drug/alcohol use
• evidence on the risk factors related to offending and drug use
• information on the nature of offences committed, such as the role of co-offenders and the relationship between perpetrators and victims

For the second edition (December 2008), the variable PFA (police force area) has been supplied for the main file. This variable was previously unavailable.

Main Topics:

The basic OCJS questionnaire comprises modules on the following topics:

• household grid (conducted using Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI))
• socio-demographic characteristics (CAPI)
• neighbourhood (CAPI)
• attitudes to the criminal justice system (CAPI)
• contact with criminal justice system (part 1) (CAPI)
• victimisation (CAPI)
• antisocial behaviour (conducted using Audio Computer Assisted Self-Interviewing (ACASI))
• white collar/'hi-tech' crime (ACASI)
• offending - count/follow-up (ACASI)
• offending - nature (conducted using Computer Assisted Self-Interviewing (CASI))
• contact with criminal justice system (part 2) (CASI)
• domestic violence (CASI)
• drinking (CASI)
• drug use (CASI)
• health, lifestyle and risk factors (CASI)
• reactions to the survey and recontact (CASI)

In addition to questionnaire data, the dataset also includes derived socio-economic and geo-demographic variables.

The data files included in the OCJS 2006 are as follows:

• ‘OCJS_2006_archive_data_10_to_25s’: main individual respondent-level dataset (aged 10-25)
• ‘OCJS_2006_archive_data_all’: main individual respondent-level dataset (aged 10-29)
• ‘OCJS_2006_archive_nature_data_10_to_25s': contains data on the circumstances surrounding individual offences (cases represent offences, not respondents) (aged 10-25)
• ‘OCJS_2006_archive_nature_data_all’: offence level data (aged 10-29)

There were 116 homicides recorded by the police in London in the 2023/24 reporting year, compared with 112 in 2022/23. During this provided time period, 2017/18 had the most homicides in London at 159, with the fewest occurring in 2016/17, when there were 107. Comparisons with the rest of the UK With a homicide rate of 13.1 per million people, London had the highest homicide rate among UK regions in 2023/24. On a more localized level, the Metropolitan Police of Greater London reported a lower homicide rate than other police force areas that cover major cities, such as the West Midlands Police Force, while the highest homicide rate among UK police forces was in Cleveland, in North East England. Across England and Wales as a whole, the number of homicides in 2023/24 was 583, compared with 581 in the previous year. Knives the most common weapon used In 2022/23 there were 244 homicides in England and Wales involving a knife or other sharp instrument. As a comparison, there were just 29 homicides caused by a firearm in the same reporting year. While guns are generally difficult to obtain in the United Kingdom, knives are far more prevalent and have become a major problem for the police, particularly in London. The number of knife crime offences in London rose from 9,752 in 2015/16 to over 15,928 by 2019/20, before falling back recently, to 12,786 in 2022/23. Although 2023/24 saw a return to near pre-pandemic levels, with 15,016 offences.

There were 252,545 violent crime offences recorded by the Metropolitan Police and City of London Police Forces in London in 2023/24 an increase when compared with the previous reporting year. From a low of 186,488 violent crimes in 2015/16, violent crime has increased in almost every year. This reflects a pattern of increasing violent crime replicated across England and Wales as a whole, with a peak of 2.1 million offences reported in 2022/23. Overall offences also rising The overall crime figures for London also show a trend of increasing crime in the UK capital. In 2015/16 for example, there were 743,728 crimes recorded in London, compared to 938,020 in 2023/24. This follows a similar pattern seen in the rest of the United Kingdom, which has witnessed an uptick in crime after reaching historic lows in the mid-2010s. In 2013/14 for example, there were approximately 62 crimes per 100,000 people in England and Wales, compared with 89.7 in 2023/24. Police budgets rising again Due to the austerity policies enacted by UK governments in the 2010s, the amount the UK government spent on the police was effectively frozen between 2013/14 and 2016/17. This policy has since been reversed, with the overall UK police budget reaching 25.3 billion pounds in 2022/23. The amount budgeted for the Metropolitan Police by the Mayor of London for 2023/24 was 4.53 billion British pounds, a significant increase on the 3.33 billion budgeted in 2018/19.

Rape offences have increased dramatically in England and Wales since 2012/13 when there were 16,038 offences. After this year, rape offences increased substantially, reaching a high of 69,973 offences in the 2021/22 reporting year, before falling slightly to 68,949 in 2022/23, and to 67,928 in 2023/24. When 2023/24 is compared with the 2002/03 reporting year, there was an almost sixfold increase in the number of rape offences recorded by the police in England and Wales. Similar patterns in Scotland and Northern Ireland While there has also been an increase in the number of rape and attempted rape offences in Scotland, the increase has not been quite as steep, with offences reaching 2,459 in 2022/23 compared with 924 in 2002/03. In Northern Ireland there has been a sharp rise in overall sexual offences, rising from 1,438 in 2002/03, to 4,232 by 2022/23. This rise in overall sexual offences is also observable in Scotland, with 15,049 offences in 2022/23, compared with 6,623 in 2002/03. Explaining the increase Although overall crime has shown a noticeable uptick recently, the rise in sexual offences has been much more pronounced. Rather than falling in the mid-2010s and then rising again towards the end of the decade, like overall crime, sexual offences remained at a relatively stable figure, until 2013/14 when it increased dramatically, a pattern mirrored in both Scotland and Northern Ireland. This is possibly due to better reporting practices by the police as well as an increasing willingness of victims to come forward, including historic victims of sexual violence.

The number of knife or sharp instrument offences recorded by the police in London rose to approximately 15,016 in 2023/24, compared with 12,786 in the previous year. This was the highest number of knife crime offences reported in London since 2019/20, when there were 15,928 offences. Between 2015/16 and 2019/20, knife crime in London increased yearly, with a particularly large increase occurring between 2016/16 and 2017/18. A wider trend The increase in knife crime witnessed in London has occurred alongside a general increase in overall crime throughout England and Wales. In 2022/23, there were approximately 6.74 million crime offences across England and Wales, compared with just over four million ten years earlier. During a similar time period, the number of knife homicides also increased, and reached 282 in 2021/22, compared with 186 in 2014/15. Due to strict gun laws in the United Kingdom, firearms are rarely used to commit homicides, with knives or other sharp instruments being used in over 41.4 percent of homicides in 2022/23. Acid and moped attacks While knife crime in London has certainly been given a lot of attention by the British media, the increase in acid and moped attacks during the same time period also generated many headlines. In 2017, for example, there were 471 acid attacks recorded by the Metropolitan Police, compared with just 51 in 2007. Moped crime also reached high levels in 2017, with both types of crime declining to much lower levels by the early 2020s. Although overall crime in London continued to rise until 2019/20, this fell back during the COVID-19 pandemic, but by 2023/24, the number of crimes committed in the capital had exceeded pre-pandemic levels.

Saint Kitts and Nevis saw a murder rate of 65 per 100,000 inhabitants, making it the most dangerous country for this kind of crime worldwide as of 2023. Interestingly, El Salvador, which long had the highest global homicide rates, has dropped out of the top 20 after a high number of gang members have been incarcerated. Meanwhile, Celaya in Mexico was the most dangerous city for murders. Violent conflicts worldwide Notably, these figures do not include deaths that resulted from war or a violent conflict. While there is a persistent number of conflicts worldwide, resulting casualties are not considered murders. Partially due to this reason, homicide rates in Latin America are higher than those in Afghanistan or Syria. A different definition of murder in these circumstances could change the rate significantly in some countries. Causes of death Also noteworthy is that murders are usually not random events. In the United States, the circumstances of murders are most commonly arguments, followed by narcotics incidents and robberies. Additionally, murders are not a leading cause of death. Heart diseases, strokes and cancer pose a greater threat to life than violent crime.

Handguns are by far the most common murder weapon used in the United States, accounting for 7,159 homicides in 2023. This is followed by firearms of an unstated type, with 5,295 cases in that year. Why do murders happen in the U.S.? While most of the time the circumstances of murders in the U.S. remain unknown, homicides due to narcotics come in as the second most common circumstance – making them more common than, for example, gang killings. Despite these gruesome facts, the violent crime rate has fallen significantly since 1990, and the United States is much safer than it was in the 1980s and 1990s. Knife crime vs disease: Leading causes of death The death rate in the U.S. had hovered around the same level since 1990 until there was a large increase due to the COVID-19 pandemic in recent years. Heart disease, cancer, and accidents were the three leading causes of death in the country in 2022. The rate of death from heart disease is significantly higher than the homicide rate in the United States, at 167.2 deaths per 100,000 population compared to a 5.7 homicides per 100,000. Given just 1,562 murders were caused by knife crime, it is fair to say that heart disease is a far bigger killer in the U.S.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This research aimed to provide an overview of the trends in crime and victimisation in an inner city area over the last thirty years. In this period it is widely recognised that the inner city has undergone major changes involving significant population shifts. The London Borough of Islington is taken as a point of reference because it exhibits significant changes in the composition of its population over the last thirty years as well as experiencing major changes in its leisure and consumer activities. At the same time it includes an interesting mix of gentrified areas combined with pockets of poverty and deprivation.

The principal aim of the research was to examine changes in the distribution of crime and victimisation in this particular context. In 1986 a landmark study of crime and victimisation was carried out and published in the form of The Islington Crime Survey (Jones, McLean and Young, 1986). This study sought to both extend and qualify the findings of the then British Crime Survey (currently referred to as the Crime Survey for England and Wales) which collected national data. It was recognised that the form and level of crime varies significantly by area and that if victimisation surveys are going to inform policy then they have to be detailed and localised. For example, local crime surveys like The Islington Crime Survey (ICS) are able to identify specific streets and areas where people feel unsafe and can provide policy makers with the information that allows them to make such areas safer. They also allow assessments by residents of police performance and the opportunity for residents to express their priorities and concerns.

Nationally, there has been a significant decrease in most forms of recorded crime over the last two decades. This research provided an investigation of this decrease in an inner city area and aimed to identify which groups, if any, have benefited from this decrease. The survey also looked at repeat victimisation since it is known that some of the most victimised groups tend to be repeatedly victimised, with the aim to see if these levels of repeat victimisation have increased or decreased over time.

One of the main aims of the survey was to gain information of the experiences of victimisation amongst different ethnic groups and also to examine their relation with the police. There is also a focus on domestic violence, fear of crime, as well as forms of commercial crime. The research also drew on other data sources that provide information on crime in the borough that have been produced over the past thirty years in order to identify trends. The identification of these trends are in turn linked to an analysis of the changing economic and social context in which they are taking place. In this way the research examined changes in the distribution of victimisation in relation to the changing social composition and economic activity in the borough. This form of analysis should be able to say something significant about the changing nature of urban life and about people's concerns and experiences, which should provide some useful insights into the changing dynamics of urban culture.

There is considerable debate by academic researchers about the nature and direction of urban change and in particular how these changes relate to crime. There are also debates about the degree to which various crime prevention measures have been effective in reducing crime. By identifying urban trends in conjunction with changing patterns of crime this research provides a unique opportunity to increase our understanding of some of the most significant developments that are taking place in contemporary society.

The survey was undertaken using a face-to-face Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) methodology, with interviews being conducted in respondents’ homes. To qualify as a ‘victim’ for the purposes of the study, a respondent needed to have experienced one of the particular crime types that were in scope for the study, and to have done so in the period between the start of 2015 and the time of the interview. 2,000 interviews were targeted in total (1,500 interviews with victims and 500 interviewers with non-victims).


Main Topics:

Crime victimisation; urban crime; crime change; Islington.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

Since the end of the second world war, police recorded crime has risen dramatically in both England and Wales and, to a lesser extent, Scotland. Crime surveys have revealed a less dramatic increase in crime in England and Wales (Mirrlees-Black et al, 1996), and little if any in Scotland (MVA, 1998), and suggest that increases in police recorded crime figures are largely due to an increased propensity for the public to report crime. There is evidence to suggest, however, that there has been a real increase in problem behaviour among young people, paralleled by postwar increases in other psychosocial disorders during the teenage years (Smith and Rutter, 1995). In addition, evidence consistently suggests that the rate of offending among males is higher than that among females, although the gap is starting to narrow.

The Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime (ESYTC) aims to further our understanding of young people’s involvement in criminal behaviour, and explore the striking differences in offending rates and anti-social behaviour between males and females. It is a longitudinal study involving an entire year group of children, namely those eligible to start first year of secondary school in the City of Edinburgh in 1998. The cohort comprises approximately 4,300 young people who were aged between 11.5 and 12.5 years at the start of the study. Annual sweeps of data collection are conducted, with the intention of tracking the cohort through their teenage years and into early adulthood. The UK Data Archive currently holds data from Waves One to Four.

While the study focuses entirely on criminal offending among a generation of young people within the City of Edinburgh, the findings are likely to be of wider national and international relevance and importance. National comparisons will be made with other related studies in Scotland and the rest of the UK (such as crime surveys, health and drug studies, etc). The international dimension will be developed through direct comparisons with cohort studies in Denver, Pittsburgh and Rochester, and links with other studies in Chicago, Philadelphia, Dunedin and Stockholm.