In the 2024/25 reporting year, West Yorkshire Police reported a crime rate of 114.5 crimes per 1,000 population, the highest crime rate among the provided police force areas whose territories include large cities. Greater Manchester Police reported a crime rate of 108.2 crimes per 1,000 population and had the second-highest crime rate during this year.

With approximately 122.1 crimes per 1,000 population, Cleveland, in North East England, had the highest crime rate of all the police force areas in England and Wales in 2024/25. High crime rates are evident in other areas of northern England, such as West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester at 114.5 and 108.2, respectively. In the UK capital, London, the crime rate was 105.5 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 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, and 6.59 million in 2024/25. 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 530,640 in 2024/25. 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 2022, it took an average of 407 days for a crown court case to reach a conclusion from the time of the offence, compared with 233 days in 2018. This is most likely related to the large backlog of cases in crown courts, which reached over 67,750 in 2023. Furthermore, prisons in England and Wales are dangerously overcrowded, with the government even releasing some prisoners early to address the issue.

London had the highest crime rate among regions of the United Kingdom in 2024/25, at approximately ***** crimes per 1,000 population, followed by Yorkshire and the Humber, at ***** crimes per 1,000 people. On a more local level, the police force area with the highest crime rate in England and Wales was that of Cleveland, in North East England. Although London had the fifth-highest crime rate among police force areas, it was lower than the crime rates of the West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, and South Yorkshire police force areas as well. Is crime in the UK rising? Between the early 2000s and the mid-2010s, crime in the UK declined quite significantly. The crime rates of England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland all fell during this time period. From around 2013/14, however the crime rate in England and Wales began to rise again, approaching levels seen in the 2000s. In Scotland and Northern Ireland crime also stopped declining at the same rate, although there was no sudden increase as seen in England and Wales. Without adjusting for population-size, the overall number of crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales reached a peak of around 6.74 million offences in 2022/23, falling slightly in the two years since then. What kinds of crime are increasing? Although overall crime levels have increased, some types of crime have continued to decline. Overall theft offences for example, are far lower than in the 2000s. This is partly due to the decline in burglaries, and vehicle theft offences. Shoplifting offences, by contrast have spiked since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching a peak of over ******* offences in 2024/25. Additionally, the number of violence against the person offences surged from 2014/15 onwards, with the number of sexual offences also at far higher levels than in the recent past.

The crime rate in the United Kingdom was highest in England and Wales in 2024/25, at **** crimes per 1,000 people, compared with Scotland, which had **** crimes per 1,000 population, and Northern Ireland, at **** crimes per 1,000 people in 2023/24. 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 **** crimes per 1,000 people in 2002/03, to just **** by 2021/22. Overall crime on the rise In 2024/25, there were approximately **** million crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales. Although this was a slight decline on the previous two years, it was still far higher than during the mid-2010s. While crime declined quite significantly between 2002/03 and 2013/14, this trend went into reverse 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 **** billion pounds, with this cut to *****billion in 2013/14. One of the most visible consequences of these cuts was a sharp reduction in the number of police officers in the UK. Between 2010 and 2017, the number of officers fell by 20,000, although the number of officers returned to pre-austerity levels by the 2020s. A creaking justice system During the period of austerity, the Ministry of Justice as a whole saw its budget sharply decline, from *** billion pounds in 2009/10 to just **** 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. In 2022, for example, it took on average *** days for a crown court case to go from offence to conclusion, compared with *** days in 2018. 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 years.

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 of England and Wales in 2024/25 was ***** crimes per thousand people when fraud and computer misuse crimes were included and **** when excluded. This represented one of the highest crime rates in this time period, nonetheless a decline when compared with 2022/23, when the crime rate peaked at *****, or ****, when excluding computer fraud.

The average for 2017 based on 97 countries was 7.4 homicides per 100,000 people. The highest value was in El Salvador: 61.8 homicides per 100,000 people and the lowest value was in Japan: 0.2 homicides per 100,000 people. The indicator is available from 1990 to 2017. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

Data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) showing breakdowns of victimisation over time and by various demographic characteristics.

In the 2024/25 reporting year, West Yorkshire reported the highest violent crime rate among police force areas of England and Wales, at 47.9 violent crimes per 1,000 people.

Recorded crime figures for CSP areas. Number of offences for the last two years, percentage change, and rates per 1,000 population for the latest year.

This is the tenth report in an annual series combining crimes recorded by the police and interviews from the British Crime Survey (BCS) for the financial year 2010/11. Each source has different strengths and weaknesses but together they provide a more comprehensive picture of crime than could be obtained from either series alone. Additional explanatory notes are available in the User Guide to Home Office Crime Statistics.

Longer term datasets contain https://data.gov.uk/dataset/0e26ee1b-26b7-406e-a3b1-f3481b324977/local-police-recorded-crime-data">police recorded crime for police force areas and local authorities

https://data.gov.uk/dataset/ea7a5bd4-4c26-4ea3-b1ff-c5c0dfe9fcfd/crime-in-england-and-wales-2010-11">Crimes detected in England & Wales 2010/11 reports on the levels and trends in detections and detection rates in England and Wales.

The last annual crime statistics https://data.gov.uk/dataset/df7e3554-2a62-497a-bbd6-2c3982dba5a5/crime-in-england-and-wales-2009-10">Crime in England and Wales 2009/10 was published in July 2010.

See the https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/crimeinenglandandwalesannualsupplementarytables">Crime Survey supplementary tables on the nature of: burglary, vehicle-related theft, bicycle theft, household theft, personal and other theft and vandalism.

Since 2014, Eurostat and the UNODC have launched a joint annual data collection on crime and criminal justice statistics, using the UN crime trends questionnaire and complementary Eurostat requests

for specific areas of interest to the European Commission. The data and metadata are collected from National Statistical Institutes or other relevant authorities (mainly police and justice departments) in each EU Member State, EFTA country and EU potential members. On the Eurostat website, data are available for 41 jurisdictions since 2008 until 2018 data and for 38 jurisdictions since 2019 data (EU-27, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, Turkey, Kosovo(1)), having drop the data for the United Kingdom separately owing to three separate jurisdictions England and Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland.

This joint data collection and other data collections carried out by Eurostat allows to gather information on:

• police-recorded offences by type of crime
• police-recorded offences by NUTS3 region
• intentional homicide and sexual violence victims and perpetrators (suspected, prosecuted, convicted) by sex
• intentional homicide victims by age, sex, and relationship to the offender
• intentional homicide victims and offences in largest cities
• offenders by justice legal status (suspected, prosecuted, convicted), age, sex, and citizenship
• persons brought before criminal courts by legal status (convicted persons/acquitted)
• personnel by institution (police, courts, and prisons) by sex
• legal cases in first instance courts by type and stage
• prisoners by age, sex, citizenship, and status of the trial process
• prison capacity and occupancy
• people involved in human trafficking by legal status (victims, suspected and convicted traffickers) and victims of human trafficking by all forms of exploitation and citizenship

Where available, data are broken down by sex, age groups (adults/juveniles), country of citizenship (foreigners or nationals) and other relevant variables. National data are available and for intentional homicide offences, city level data (largest cities) are available for some countries. Regional data at NUTS3 level are also available for some police-recorded offences.

Some historical series are available:

• Number of police-recorded crimes by type (intentional homicide, violence, robbery, home burglary, car thefts, and drug crimes) for the period 1993 – 2007
• Number of police-recorded homicide in cities for the period 1993 – 2007
• Number of police officers for the period 1993 – 2007
• Prison population for the period 1993 – 2007

Total number of police-recorded crimes for the period 1950 – 2000

(1) under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244/99

There were approximately 6.59 million crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales in 2024/25, compared with approximately 6.66 million in the previous reporting year. Although there was a slight decline on the previous two reporting years, 2024/25 saw the third-highest number of crimes recorded in the provided time period, with the dip in crime figures 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 increased at a fairly rapid pace from 2014 onward, rising from just over four million to a peak of 6.74 million offences in 2022/23. Reversing the trend after a decade of cuts The uptick in crime since the mid-2010s has led to serious questions about how to further reverse this trend and if the police have enough manpower and resources to counter it. Due to austerity measures pursued by the 2010 coalition government, police forces had to contend with fewer resources, leading to cuts in personnel. Between 2010 and 2017, officer numbers across the UK were reduced by 22,000 In more recent years, public sector expenditure on the police force has started to increase and reached 27.3 billion British pounds in 2023/24. As of 2024, there were around 170,500 police officers in the UK, 1,500 fewer than in 2010. Crime rates are highest in Northern England In 2024/25, the police force area with the highest crime rate in this year was Cleveland, located in the North East of England, which had approximately 122 crimes per 1,000 people, compared with the England and Wales average of 87.2. After Cleveland, the highest crime rates were reported by forces that are responsible for policing major UK cities, such as West Yorkshire Police, Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire, and the Metropolitan Police in London. The areas with the lowest crime rates are typically more rural in nature, such as Wiltshire, which had the lowest crime rate in this reporting year.

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

This method returns total crime rates, crime rates by crime types, area ratings by total crime, and area ratings by crime type for small areas (Lower Layer Super Output Areas, or LSOAs) and Local Authority Districts (LADs). The results are determined by the inclusion of the submitted postcode/coordinates/UPRN within the corresponding LSOA or LAD.

All figures are annual (for the last 12 months).

The crime rates are calculated per 1,000 resident population derived from the census 2021.

The dataset is updated on a monthly basis, with a 3-month lag between the current date and the most recent data.

This method returns Crystal Roof’s proprietary crime rate map overlays. These overlays are taken directly from our main Crime Rates map.

The overlays are circular PNG images, available in 1,000, 1,500, or 2,000-meter radii.

You can request overlays showing either total crime rates or crime rates for a specific crime type (controlled by the variant parameter).

About Crystal Roof’s Crime Rates Map

• Crime rates are calculated for small geographic areas known as Lower Layer Super Output Areas (LSOAs).
• Rates are calculated per 1,000 residents, using population data from the 2021 Census.
• Crime levels are grouped into 10 categories using our proprietary algorithm, which balances both the distribution of crime values and the number of areas with similar rates. These categories are not standard deciles.
• All figures represent annual data (covering the most recent 12 months).
• The dataset is updated monthly, with a three-month lag between the current date and the most recent available data.

Integration examples

• Google Maps integration example
• Leaflet integration example