/sta_index.htm

 

Crime
Statistics

 

Statistics

Crime In England & Wales

Recorded Crime Statistics England &
Wales

The British Crime Survey

Home Office Research Development &
Statistics Directorate (RDS)

National Statistics

International Crime Statistics

Crime In England & Wales

Crime in England & Wales is a document that combines both
Recorded Crime Statistics (crime recorded by the police) and the
British Crime Survey (crime as experienced by people – gathered from
surveys) into a single document that will make comparisons between
the two easier, and give a more complete picture of crime.
Individual summaries for current Recorded Crime Figures and British
Crime Survey are given below, but to see the full picture, you will
need to download Crime
In England & Wales 2003-04
.

Local crime data

The Home Office has produced an online
tool
that takes the data from Crime in England and Wale and
allows you to interrogate it. You can look at specific regions or
areas, and at either the general crime trend or the trend in 8 crime
groupings: burglary, criminal damage, drug offences, fraud, robbery,
sexual offences, vehicle and other theft and violent crimes. 

Using the tool, you can display a graph of crime in your area and
compare it to the national average. The tool also contains links to
tip and advice on reducing crime, and links to what’s going on in
your area to reduce crime.

Visit the Crime
Statistics Tool

Quarterly Updates

A supplementary update to Crime in England & Wales is
published every three months. The most
recent quarterly bulletin
was published in January 2005.

Recorded Crime Statistics England &
Wales

Recorded crime refers to notifiable offences recorded by the
police according to the Home Office rules on counting and
classification.

Details of the latest in a series of regular bulletins issued by
Home Office Research Development and Statistics (RDS) Directorate
are given below. Until 2002, two main bulletins were issued annually
covering the 12 months to September and the 12 months to March. From
2002 onwards, the Recorded Crime Statistics have been published once
per year as part of Crime in England & Wales.

Main points:

  • The total number of crimes recorded by the police in 2003/04
    was down by 1% on the previous year’s figure.

  • There was a rise in violent crime of 12%, largely due to
    recent changes in reording practices and contradicted by the
    British Crime Survey’s findings.

  • The police detection rate was slighly down

See Crime In England & Wales to download the
full report

Previous bulletins are available in the publications
area of the RDS website
.

British Crime Survey

The British Crime Survey (BCS) asks randomly selected adults in
private households about their experience of victimisation in the
previous year. As well as the main crime counting element, a number
of other crime-related issues are covered. To ensure comparability,
most questions on victimisation have remained the same in each sweep
of the BCS, but other topics have varied.

From 2002, BCS becomes an annual survey using a larger sample of
nearly 40,000 people (previous high was 20,000). This will enable
more accurate comparison with recorded crime statistics. Since 2002,
the BCS has formed part of Crime in England & Wales.

Main points:

  • There was a 5% drop in overall crime compared with 2002/03

  • Violent crime was down 3%, and was burglary

  • Vehicle crime was down by 10%

  • Victimisation rates (the cahnce of becoming a victim of
    crime) was the lowest since the BCS began in 1981.

See Crime In England & Wales to download the
full report

Home Office Research, Development &
Statistics (RDS) Directorate

The Research, Development and Statistics Directorate (RDS) is an
integral part of the Home Office and provides information that helps
Ministers and policy makers take evidence-based decisions, and also
helps the police, probation service, the courts, immigration
officials and fire-fighters to do their jobs as effectively as
possible. It does this by maintaining the various statistical
services published by the Home Office and by carrying out research
itself or commissioning others to do so.

Visit the RDS
website
to view publications, the RDS Research Programme, the
Statistical Programme, and rds
digest 4 – information on the criminal justice system

National Statistics

National Statistics is the UK government arm responsible for all
government related statistics. The National Statistician is head of
this service as well as Director of the Office for National
Statistics (ONS).

National Statistics provides a wide range of statistical
information on social, health, economic, demographic, labour market
and business topics. It also conducts social surveys and the
population Census
every 10 years, and has initiated a long-term project to make
statistics available at neighbourhood level.

Click here to visit
the National Statistics website.

International Crime Statistics

It can be difficult to compare crime statistics across countries
due to different legal and administrative systems. There are some
statistical comparisons of crime trends, including International
comparisons of criminal justice statistics 1999
, a bulletin
published by the Home Office comparing data from European Union
member states, European Union applicant countries and selected other
countries. A further international
comparison bulletin
was published in November 2003

The latest set of statistics to be published by the US Department
of Justice in October 2004 compares National
crime rates between 8 countries during the period 1981 and 1999.

A number of websites provide lists of links to a variety of
international crime and criminal justice statistical sources
available on the internet. Two such sites are detailed in links
to international websites
.

 

 

Last update:  25 January 2005