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 in the United Kingdom was highest in England and Wales in 2023/24, 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. 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 2022/23 there were approximately **** million crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales, with this falling to **** 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 **** billion pounds, with this cut to between ***** billion and ***** 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 ******* police officers in the UK, with this increasing to ******* by 2023. 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. As of the first quarter of 2023, for example, it took on average *** days for a crown court case to go from offence to conclusion, compared with *** 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.

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.

Crime data and neighbourhood policing information from all forces in England and Wales to the Public. This data is what is behind the police.uk website.

The Police API allows you to retrieve information about neighbourhood areas in all 43 English & Welsh police forces. All forces are required to keep this data accurate and up to date, so the API provides a rich and definitive data source for crime statistics at both street and neighourhood level.

The API is implemented as a standard XML REST web service using HTTP GET/POST requests.

The monthly data dumps can be downloaded using URLs structured consistently in the following format: https://data.police.uk/data/archive/[year]-[month].zip However because the data file is over 19 million rows, we also provide Custom CSV Download and JSON API helper interfaces so you can easily access subsets of the data. Generally, we recommend working with one of these interfaces instead of the full data dump.

Summary figures for ‘no crime’ data are published by the Office for National Statistics in the User Guide to Crime Statistics.

Police forces record some crimes which are subsequently ‘no crimed’ where it is judged by the police that no crime actually took place.

The Home Office Counting Rules (HOCR) set out circumstances under which a crime report may be ‘no crimed’. These include situations where a crime is considered to have been recorded in error or where, having been recorded, additional verifiable information becomes available that determines that no crime was committed (for further information see the ‘general rules’ section of the HOCR).

‘No crimes’ relate to crimes already recorded and are therefore distinct from incident reports that are not crimed in the first place.

Crime reports that are ‘no crimed’ are removed from police crime data and thus from the police recorded crime statistics. The majority of ‘no crime’ decisions are made by police forces before data are submitted to the Home Office, and although some revisions are made to published crime statistics as a result of ‘no crimes’, these are typically small.

The Home Office routinely collects data from police forces on the number of incidents that have been recorded as crimes but have then been ‘no crimed’. A table showing the numbers and percentages of ‘no crimes’ by offence group is available (in Table UG9 of the User Guide tables) from the http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/taxonomy/index.html?nscl=Crime+in+England+and+Wales" class="govuk-link">ONS website The Home Office has made available the force level data that underpin this table.

Datasets are available below as Excel spreadsheets (.xls) and in Comma Separated Values (.csv) format.

Great care is needed in interpreting ‘no crime’ data. The proportion of ‘no crimes’ does not in itself infer high or low compliance with the overall requirements of the HOCR. Levels of ‘no criming’ are particularly susceptible to local recording practice and the IT systems in use. A police force having a high level of ‘no crimes’ may be indicative of that force having a local recording process that captures all reports as crimes at the first point of contact and before any further investigation has taken place to consider the full facts. Equally a police force with a low level of ‘no crimes’ might be indicative of a recording practice by which reports are retained as incidents only until a fuller investigation has taken place.

In 2012, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) in their wider http://www.hmic.gov.uk/media/review-police-crime-incident-reports-20120125.pdf" class="govuk-link">review of crime and incident recording examined force ‘no crime’ processes to determine if decisions to ‘crime’ were made correctly. In HMIC’s review, which looked at a small number of ‘no crime’ decisions (less than 5,000 across England and Wales), they found that nationally the ‘no crime’ compliance rate was 87 per cent; this was 84 per cent for violent crime. The range for correct ‘no crime’ decisions was between 75 and 100 per cent across all police forces.

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.

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.

Data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) on violence with and without injury, and harassment, and police recorded crime on violence against the person and sexual offences.

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.

In the 2023/24 reporting year, West Yorkshire Police reported a crime rate of 121.7 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 117.7 crimes per 1,000 population, and had the second-highest crime rate during this year.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) asks a sole adult in a random sample of households about their, or their household's, experience of crime victimisation 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). These variables are contained within the non-victim form (NVF) data file. In 2009, the survey was extended to children aged 10-15 years old; one resident of that age range was also selected from the household and asked about their experience of crime and other related topics. The first set of children's data covered January-December 2009 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 study.

The Telephone-operated Crime Survey for England and Wales (TCSEW) became operational on 20 May 2020. It was a replacement for the face-to-face CSEW, which was suspended on 17 March 2020 because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. It was set up with the intention of measuring the level of crime during the pandemic. As the pandemic continued throughout the 2020/21 survey year, questions have been raised as to whether the year ending March 2021 TCSEW is comparable with estimates produced in earlier years by the face-to-face CSEW. The ONS Comparability between the Telephone-operated Crime Survey for England and Wales and the face-to-face Crime Survey for England and Wales report explores those factors that may have a bearing on the comparability of estimates between the TCSEW and the former CSEW. These include survey design, sample design, questionnaire changes and modal changes.

More general information about the CSEW 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.

History - the British Crime Survey

The CSEW was formerly known as the British Crime Survey (BCS), and has been in existence since 1981. The 1982 and 1988 BCS waves were also conducted in Scotland (data held separately under SNs 4368 and 4599). Since 1993, separate Scottish Crime and Justice Surveys have been conducted. Up to 2001, the BCS was conducted biennially. From April 2001, the Office for National Statistics took over the survey and it became the CSEW. Interviewing was then carried out continually and reported on in financial year cycles. The crime reference period was altered to accommodate this.

Secure Access CSEW data
In addition to the main survey, a series of questions covering drinking behaviour, drug use, self-offending, gangs and personal security, and intimate personal violence (IPV) (including stalking and sexual victimisation) are asked of adults via a laptop-based self-completion module (questions may vary over the years). Children aged 10-15 years also complete a separate self-completion questionnaire. The questionnaires are included in the main documentation, but the data are only available under Secure Access conditions (see SN 7280), not with the main study. In addition, from 2011 onwards, lower-level geographic variables are also available under Secure Access conditions (see SN 7311).

New methodology for capping the number of incidents from 2017-18
The CSEW datasets available from 2017-18 onwards are based on 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 datasets are not, comparability has been lost with years prior to 2012-2013. More information can be found in the 2017-18 User Guide (see SN 8464) and the article ‘Improving victimisation estimates derived from the Crime Survey for England and Wales’.

2011-2012 self-completion modules:
From October 2016, the self-completion questionnaire modules covering drug use, drinking behaviour, and domestic violence, sexual victimisation and stalking are subject to Controlled data access conditions - see SN 7280.

CSEW Historic back series – dataset update (March 2022)

From January 2019, all releases of crime statistics using CSEW data adopted a new methodology for measuring repeat victimisation (moving from a cap of 5 in the number of repeat incidents to tracking the 98th percentile value for major crime types).

To maintain a consistent approach across historic data, all datasets back to 2001 have been revised to the new methodology. The change affects all incident data and related fields. A “bolt-on” version of the data has been created for the 2001/02 to 2011/12 datasets. This “bolt-on” dataset contains only...

There were 16,624 fraud crimes recorded by the police in Scotland in 2023/24, a slight fall on 2022/23, but a significant increase compared with previous reporting years, such as in 2019/20 when there were 11,939 of these offences.

In 2023, there were four homicide offences recorded in the Northern Ireland policing district of Armagh City, Banbridge & Craigavon, and one each in seven other districts. In this reporting year, there were 11 homicides in Northern Ireland, with three policing districts recording no homicide offences.

For the year ending March 2023, 5.7 percent of crime offences resulted in a charge or summons in England and Wales. While this was an improvement when compared with the previous four quarters, it was far lower than in the first quarter of 2015, when 15.5 percent of crimes were solved.