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.

In the 223/24 reporting year, the Cleveland police force reported a homicide rate of 22.4 homicides per million people, the highest among the provided police force areas in England in that year

This graph presents the crime rate of ten leading business cities within the United Kingdom (UK) in 2015. The data shows that Edinburgh has the lowest amount of crimes committed per 1000 inhabitants. The first four cities with the lowest crime rate in this statistic are located in Scotland and the North of England.

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

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.

Crime Rates of offences per thousand population, by broad crime grouping, by financial year for wards.

Offences: These are confirmed reports of crimes being committed. All data relates to "notifiable offences" - which are designated categories of crimes that all police forces in England and Wales are required to report to the Home Office.

Ward data should not be aggregated to give a borough or London total. This is because a small percentage (less than 5%) of crimes in this dataset have not been geocoded to a ward. Therefore total numbers and rates are indicative only, and are not an exact measure at ward level.

The rate is calculated using ward GLA 2012-based (SHLAA) population projections, and population data calculated and constrained to 2012 Borough (SHLAA) projections.

The London figure only includes the Met Police area, not the City of London.

The London total includes all offences in the Met Police Area including those that could not be geocoded. Therefore the London total will not equal the sum of the wards.

Some ward boundaries changed in 2014. From 2013/14 the data shown is for the new boundaries. This only affects Hackney, Kensington and Chelsea, and Tower Hamlets.

Action Fraud have taken over the recording of fraud offences on behalf of individual police forces. This process began in April 2011 and was rolled out to all police forces by March 2013. Due to this change caution should be applied when comparing data over this transitional period and with earlier years.

Data by detailed crime group and month are available from the MPS website.

In the 2022/23 reporting year, West Yorkshire reported the highest violent crime rate among police force areas of England and Wales, at 50.8 violent crimes per 1,000 people.

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.

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.

In 2023/24, London had the highest homicide rate of any region of the United Kingdom, at 13.1 homicides per million people, followed by the East Midlands at 12.2 homicides per million people.

In 2023/24 there were 116 homicide offences recorded in London, the most of any region of the United Kingdom during that time period. North West England, which includes the large city of Manchester had 71 homicides, and had the second-highest number of homicides. In the same reporting period, the constituent countries of Northern Ireland and Wales reported the fewest homicides, at 24 each. Homicides in the UK falling despite recent uptick Since 2002/03, all three jurisdictions of the UK; England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, have seen their homicide rates fall, with Scotland seeing the steepest decline. The most significant decline in homicides in this period occurred between 2002/03 and 2014/15, which saw the annual number of homicides in England and Wales half from over 1,000 to 500. This trend was suddenly reversed from 2015/16 onwards, with homicides rising to around 700 per year between 2016/17 and 2019/20. While homicides fell back to 583 in 2023/24, it remains to be seen if this pattern will continue. Knives used in almost half of all murders In 2022/23 a knife or other sharp instrument was used in over 41 percent of all murders in England and Wales, making this, by far, the most common method of killing in that reporting year. The overall number of knife homicides reached 244 in 2022/23, compared with 282 in the previous year, and just above the 281 reported in 2017/18. Firearm homicides were much rarer than knife homicides, with 29 taking place in the same reporting year, and homicides caused by shooting only accounting for 4.9 percent of homicides overall.

Data tables relating to offences involving weapons as recorded by police and hospital episode statistics.

There has been little research on United States homicide rates from a long-term perspective, primarily because there has been no consistent data series on a particular place preceding the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), which began its first full year in 1931. To fill this research gap, this project created a data series on homicides per capita for New York City that spans two centuries. The goal was to create a site-specific, individual-based data series that could be used to examine major social shifts related to homicide, such as mass immigration, urban growth, war, demographic changes, and changes in laws. Data were also gathered on various other sites, particularly in England, to allow for comparisons on important issues, such as the post-World War II wave of violence. The basic approach to the data collection was to obtain the best possible estimate of annual counts and the most complete information on individual homicides. The annual count data (Parts 1 and 3) were derived from multiple sources, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports and Supplementary Homicide Reports, as well as other official counts from the New York City Police Department and the City Inspector in the early 19th century. The data include a combined count of murder and manslaughter because charge bargaining often blurs this legal distinction. The individual-level data (Part 2) were drawn from coroners' indictments held by the New York City Municipal Archives, and from daily newspapers. Duplication was avoided by keeping a record for each victim. The estimation technique known as "capture-recapture" was used to estimate homicides not listed in either source. Part 1 variables include counts of New York City homicides, arrests, and convictions, as well as the homicide rate, race or ethnicity and gender of victims, type of weapon used, and source of data. Part 2 includes the date of the murder, the age, sex, and race of the offender and victim, and whether the case led to an arrest, trial, conviction, execution, or pardon. Part 3 contains annual homicide counts and rates for various comparison sites including Liverpool, London, Kent, Canada, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco.

Dundee City's crime rate of 847 crimes per 10,000 people was the highest of any region of Scotland in 2023/24. The rate for the whole of Scotland was 550 per 10,000 people, which appears to be driven by low crime in places such as the Orkney and Shetland Islands, with almost all Scottish cities reporting higher than average crime rates. In Glasgow, Scotland's largest city, the crime rate was 812 crimes per 10,000 people, while in the Scottish capital, Edinburgh, the crime rate was 679 per 10,000 population. Comparisons with the rest of the UK When compared with the rest of the United Kingdom, Scotland has experienced a noticeable decline in its overall crime rate. In 2008/09 for example, Scotland's crime rate was higher than that of England and Wales, as well as Northern Ireland, the other two jurisdictions in the UK. In 2022/23, however, Scotland's crime rate was the lowest in the UK, with the crime rate in England and Wales rising noticeably during the same period. Scotland's homicide rate has also fallen, from being the highest in the UK in 2002/03, to the lowest as of 2022/23. Theft and fraud drive recent crime uptick There was a slight increase in the number of crimes recorded by the Scottish police in 2023/24, when compared with the previous year. Although many other types of crimes declined during this reporting year, the number of theft offences has increased, reaching 111,054 offences in 2023/24. Fraud crime has also increased significantly in recent years, with 16,789 offences in 2022/23, compared with just 6,913 in 2014/15. The recent uptick in fraud and theft offences is also reflected in the jurisdiction England and Wales.

Yorkshire and the Humber had the highest crime rate among regions of the United Kingdom in 2023/24 at approximately 106.6 crimes per 1,000 population.

Between 2019/20 and 2023/24 there have been 47 homicide cases in the Glasgow City local authority area of Scotland, the most of any Scottish local authority in that time period. The City of Edinburgh had the second-highest number of homicides, at 24, while there were zero homicides in the Outer Hebrides.

The average for 2017 based on 65 countries was 1.8 kidnappings per 100,000 people. The highest value was in Belgium: 10.3 kidnappings per 100,000 people and the lowest value was in Bermuda: 0 kidnappings per 100,000 people. The indicator is available from 2003 to 2017. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

Incident-based crime statistics (actual incidents, rate per 100,000 population, percentage change in rate, unfounded incidents, percent unfounded, total cleared, cleared by charge, cleared otherwise, persons charged, adults charged, youth charged / not charged), by detailed violations (violent, property, traffic, drugs, other Federal Statutes), police services in British Columbia, 1998 to 2023.

A list of some key resources for comparing London with other world cities.

European Union/Eurostat, Urban Audit

Arcadis, Sustainable cities index

AT Kearney, Global Cities Index

McKinsey, Urban world: Mapping the economic power of cities

Knight Frank, Wealth report

OECD, Better Life Index

UNODC, Statistics on drugs, crime and criminal justice at the international level

Economist, Hot Spots

Economist, Global Liveability Ranking and Report August 2014

Mercer, Quality of Living Reports

PWC, Cities of opportunity

BCG, Decoding Global Talent

Forbes, World's most influential cities

Mastercard, Global Destination Cities Index

Numbeo, Database of user contributed data