This is an Official Statistics bulletin produced by statisticians in the Ministry of Justice, Home Office and the Office for National Statistics. It brings together, for the first time, a range of official statistics from across the crime and criminal justice system, providing an overview of sexual offending in England and Wales. The report is structured to highlight: the victim experience; the police role in recording and detecting the crimes; how the various criminal justice agencies deal with an offender once identified; and the criminal histories of sex offenders.

Providing such an overview presents a number of challenges, not least that the available information comes from different sources that do not necessarily cover the same period, the same people (victims or offenders) or the same offences. This is explained further in the report.

Victimisation through to police recording of crimes

Based on aggregated data from the ‘Crime Survey for England and Wales’ in 2009/10, 2010/11 and 2011/12, on average, 2.5 per cent of females and 0.4 per cent of males said that they had been a victim of a sexual offence (including attempts) in the previous 12 months. This represents around 473,000 adults being victims of sexual offences (around 404,000 females and 72,000 males) on average per year. These experiences span the full spectrum of sexual offences, ranging from the most serious offences of rape and sexual assault, to other sexual offences like indecent exposure and unwanted touching. The vast majority of incidents reported by respondents to the survey fell into the other sexual offences category.

It is estimated that 0.5 per cent of females report being a victim of the most serious offences of rape or sexual assault by penetration in the previous 12 months, equivalent to around 85,000 victims on average per year. Among males, less than 0.1 per cent (around 12,000) report being a victim of the same types of offences in the previous 12 months.

Around one in twenty females (aged 16 to 59) reported being a victim of a most serious sexual offence since the age of 16. Extending this to include other sexual offences such as sexual threats, unwanted touching or indecent exposure, this increased to one in five females reporting being a victim since the age of 16.

Around 90 per cent of victims of the most serious sexual offences in the previous year knew the perpetrator, compared with less than half for other sexual offences.

Females who had reported being victims of the most serious sexual offences in the last year were asked, regarding the most recent incident, whether or not they had reported the incident to the police. Only 15 per cent of victims of such offences said that they had done so. Frequently cited reasons for not reporting the crime were that it was ‘embarrassing’, they ‘didn’t think the police could do much to help’, that the incident was ‘too trivial or not worth reporting’, or that they saw it as a ‘private/family matter and not police business’

In 2011/12, the police recorded a total of 53,700 sexual offences across England and Wales. The most serious sexual offences of ‘rape’ (16,000 offences) and ‘sexual assault’ (22,100 offences) accounted for 71 per cent of sexual offences recorded by the police. This differs markedly from victims responding to the CSEW in 2011/12, the majority of whom were reporting being victims of other sexual offences outside the most serious category.

This reflects the fact that victims are more likely to report the most serious sexual offences to the police and, as such, the police and broader criminal justice system (CJS) tend to deal largely with the most serious end of the spectrum of sexual offending. The majority of the other sexual crimes recorded by the police related to ‘exposure or voyeurism’ (7,000) and ‘sexual activity with minors’ (5,800).

Trends in recorded crime statistics can be influenced by whether victims feel able to and decide to report such offences to the police, and by changes in police recording practices. For example, while there was a 17 per cent decrease in recorded sexual offences between 2005/06 and 2008/09, there was a seven per cent increase between 2008/09 and 2010/11. The latter increase may in part be due to greater encouragement by the police to victims to come forward and improvements in police recording, rather than an increase in the level of victimisation.

After the initial recording of a crime, the police may later decide that no crime took place as more details about the case emerge. In 2011/12, there were 4,155 offences initially recorded as sexual offences that the police later decided were not crimes. There are strict guidelines that set out circumstances under which a crime report may be ‘no crimed’. The ‘no-crime’ rate for sexual offences (7.2 per cent) compare

Incidence rates of crime in rural and urban areas.

Metadata

Indicators:

• police recorded violence against the person offences per 1,000 population
• police recorded sexual offences per 1,000 population
• police recorded robbery offences per 1,000 population
• police recorded domestic burglary offences per 1,000 households
• police recorded vehicles offences per 1,000 population

Data Source: ONS, Recorded crime data at Community Safety Partnership / Local Authority level

Coverage: England

Rural classification used: Local Authority Rural Urban Classification

Additional information:

• https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/recordedcrimedataatcommunitysafetypartnershiplocalauthoritylevel" class="govuk-link">Office for National Statistics recorded crime data at community safety partnership / local authority level

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Section 95 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991 requires the Government to publish statistical data to assess whether any discrimination exists in how the CJS treats individuals based on their ethnicity.

These statistics are used by policy makers, the agencies who comprise the CJS and others (e.g. academics, interested bodies) to monitor differences between ethnic groups, and to highlight areas where practitioners and others may wish to undertake more in-depth analysis. The identification of differences should not be equated with discrimination as there are many reasons why apparent disparities may exist. The main findings are:

Victims of crime

The 2012/13 Crime Survey for England and Wales shows that adults from self-identified Mixed, Black and Asian ethnic groups were more at risk of being a victim of personal crime than adults from the White ethnic group. This has been consistent since 2008/09 for adults from a Mixed or Black ethnic group; and since 2010/11 for adults from an Asian ethnic group. Adults from a Mixed ethnic group had the highest risk of being a victim of personal crime in each year between 2008/09 and 2012/13.

Homicide victims

Homicide is a rare event, therefore, homicide victims data are presented aggregated in three-year periods in order to be able to analyse the data by ethnic appearance. The most recent period for which data are available is 2009/10 to 2011/12.

The overall number of homicides has decreased over the past three three-year periods. The number of homicide victims of White and Other ethnic appearance decreased during each of these three-year periods. However the number of victims of Black ethnic appearance increased in 2006/07 to 2008/09 before falling again in 2009/10 to 2011/12.

For those homicides where there is a known suspect, the majority of victims were of the same ethnic group as the principal suspect. However, the relationship between victim and principal suspect varied across ethnic groups. In the three-year period from 2009/10 to 2011/12, for victims of White ethnic appearance the largest proportion of principal suspects were from the victim’s own family; for victims of Black ethnic appearance, the largest proportion of principal suspects were a friend or acquaintance of the victim; while for victims of Asian ethnic appearance, the largest proportion of principal suspects were strangers.

Homicide by sharp instrument was the most common method of killing for victims of White, Black and Asian ethnic appearance in the three most recent three-year periods. However, for homicide victims of White ethnic appearance hitting and kicking represented the second most common method of killing compared with shooting for victims of Black ethnic appearance, and other methods of killing for victims of Asian ethnic appearance.

Suspects

In 2011/12, a person aged ten or older (the age of criminal responsibility), who self-identified as belonging to the Black ethnic group was six times more likely than a White person to be stopped and searched under section 1 (s1) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and other legislation in England and Wales; persons from the Asian or Mixed ethnic group were just over two times more likely to be stopped and searched than a White person.

Despite an increase across all ethnic groups in the number of stops and searches conducted under s1 powers between 2007/08 and 2011/12, the number of resultant arrests decreased across most ethnic groups. Just under one in ten stop and searches in 2011/12 under s1 powers resulted in an arrest in the White and Black self-identified ethnic groups, compared with 12% in 2007/08. The proportion of resultant arrests has been consistently lower for the Asian self-identified ethnic group.

In 2011/12, for those aged 10 or older, a Black person was nearly three times more likely to be arrested per 1,000 population than a White person, while a person from the Mixed ethnic group was twice as likely. There was no difference in the rate of arrests between Asian and White persons.

The number of arrests decreased in each year between 2008/09 and 2011/12, consistent with a downward trend in police recorded crime since 2004/05. Overall, the number of arrests decreased for all ethnic groups between 2008/09 and 2011/12, however arrests of suspects from the Black, Asian and Mixed ethnic groups peaked in 2010/11.

Arrests for drug offences and sexual offences increased for suspects in all ethnic groups except the Chinese or Other ethnic group between 2008/09 and 2011/12. In addition, there were increases in arrests for burglary, robbery and the other offences category for suspects from the Black and Asian ethnic groups.

Defendants

The use of out of court disposals (Penalty Notices for Disorder and caution

These historic data tables contain figures up to September 2024 for:

1. Police recorded crime
2. Crime outcomes
3. Transferred/cancelled records (formerly ‘no-crimes’)
4. Knife crime
5. Firearms
6. Hate crime
7. Fraud crime
8. Rape incidents crime

There are counting rules for recorded crime to help to ensure that crimes are recorded consistently and accurately.

These tables are designed to have many uses. The Home Office would like to hear from any users who have developed applications for these data tables and any suggestions for future releases. Please contact the Crime Analysis team at crimeandpolicestats@homeoffice.gov.uk.