Statistical bulletin: Crime in England and Wales - Quarterly First Release, March 2012

Key points

• Latest figures from the 2011/12 Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) show no change in overall crime against adults compared with the 2010/11 survey. Crimes recorded by the police fell by 4 per cent between 2010/11 and 2011/12.
• CSEW crime has remained at the same level in the last three years. Prior to this there were large reductions between the 1995 and 2004/05 CSEW, after which the rate of decline slowed. Police recorded crime has continued to show annual reductions since 2004/05.
• Whilst most categories of police recorded crime fell in 2011/12 compared with 2010/11, there was a 2 per cent increase in other theft offences. This was driven principally by rises in theft of unattended property, theft from the person, bicycle theft and shoplifting.
• Estimates over the last four years indicate an upward trend in CSEW other household theft. This category includes theft of household items which are taken from outside the dwelling (for example, garden furniture).
• 2011/12 police recorded crime figures for robbery fell by 2 per cent compared with the previous year. The Metropolitan Police force area showed higher levels of robbery compared with 2010/11 whilst most other police forces areas showed reductions.
• Police recorded violence against the person decreased by 7 per cent, continuing the downward trend in recent years. More serious violent crimes such as homicide and grievous bodily harm showed marked decreases in 2011/12 compared with the previous year.

Introduction

This quarterly release presents the most recent crime statistics from two different sources: the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW, previously known as the British Crime Survey), and police recorded crime. It also draws on data from other sources to provide a more comprehensive picture. In 2009 the CSEW was extended to cover children aged 10-15. Due to the long time series for which comparable data are available, the main analysis and commentary is given for adults and households. A separate section provides a commentary on the figures for children, though these data are at too early a stage to establish trends (Table 22).

Summary

The latest figures from CSEW based on interviews in the year April 2011 to March 2012 show no statistically significant change in overall crime against households and resident adults in England and Wales. The number of crimes recorded by the police fell by 4 per cent in the year to March 2012 compared with the previous year.

Overall the number of police recorded crimes dropped to just below 4 million in 2011/12 (Table 2). Latest estimates from the CSEW indicate that there were 9.5 million offences committed against households and resident adults in England and Wales (Table 1) and 1 million against children¹ aged 10-15 living in such households.

These findings continue recent trends, with CSEW crime remaining at the same level in each of the last three years following falls since peak levels in 1995 and smaller reductions since the 2004/05 survey (Figure 1). Police recorded crime figures continued to show year-on-year reductions. The number of offences recorded in 2011/12 was a third lower than in 2002/03.

Figure 1 Trends in recorded crime and CSEW, 1981 to 2011/12

Source: Crime Survey for England and Wales - Office for National Statistics, Home Office

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Violence against the person offences recorded by the police in 2011/12 showed a 7 per cent decrease compared with 2010/11, continuing the decline in this offence group observed since 2006/07. Police recorded crime also indicates declines in some of the more serious violent crimes. Homicide² and grievous bodily harm with intent showed decreases of 14 and 9 per cent respectively, in 2011/12 compared with the previous year. Levels of violent crime estimated by the CSEW showed no statistically significant change in 2011/12 compared with the previous year, or with any year since 2006/07.

Police recorded robberies decreased by 2 per cent in 2011/12 compared with the previous year. With the exception of a notable rise in the number of robberies in 2005/06 and 2006/07 there has been a general downward trend in these offences between 2002/03 and 2009/10. Over the last three years the trend has been fairly flat, with around 75,000 robbery offences recorded in each of these years – representing the lowest levels since the introduction of the National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) in 2002/03.

Robbery offences tend to be concentrated in a small number of metropolitan forces with around half of all offences recorded in London. Analysis of recent trends in the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) area shows that although there is substantial short term fluctuation in levels of robbery, there have been two consecutive year-on-year increases in the number of robberies recorded. The decrease across England and Wales as a whole has been driven by falls in robbery seen in other large metropolitan police forces in 2011/12 compared with 2010/11, most notably West Midlands (down 20 per cent) and Greater Manchester (down 14 per cent).

Police recorded crime figures showed a fall of 5 per cent in domestic burglaries compared with the previous year and 3 per cent fall in other burglaries. Despite some fluctuations from year to year, the underlying trend for domestic burglary in the CSEW has remained fairly flat since 2004/05. The 2011/12 CSEW estimated households were three times less likely to be a victim of burglary compared with 1995 (2 in 100 households compared with 6 in 100 households in 1995).

Figure 2 Selected police recorded crime offences: volumes and percentage change between 2011/12 and 2010/11

Source: Home Office

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While most categories of police recorded crime fell in 2011/12 compared with 2010/11, the police recorded a 2 per cent increase (26,438 offences) in other theft offences (Figure 2) which was driven by increases in theft of unattended property³, theft from the person, bicycle theft and shoplifting. This rise in other theft was seen in the majority of police force areas in England and Wales follows a 4 per cent increase in such offences between 2009/10 and 2010/11.

While the apparent 10 per cent increase in other household theft (CSEW) compared with the 2010/11 CSEW was not statistically significant, CSEW estimates indicate an upward trend in this offence group. This category includes theft of household items which are taken from outside the dwelling (for example, garden furniture).

Around 2.7 million incidents of anti-social behaviour (ASB) were recorded by the police in 2011/12. There has been a consistent downward trend in the number of ASB incidents recorded since collection of these data began in 2007/08 (though there have been changes to the way in which such incidents have been recorded over time so direct comparisons are difficult).

In the 2011 calendar year (the latest period for which data are available) there were 1.1 million convicted non-notifiable offences⁴ (not covered in the recorded crime collection) and 46,000 Penalty Notices for Disorder were issued in relation to non-notifiable offences.

Table 1 Number of CSEW incidents 2011/12 and percentage change

Adults aged 16 and over/households, England and Wales

Table source: Office for National Statistics

Table notes:

1. Statistically significant change at the 5% level is indicated by an asterisk
2. A percentage change of less than 0.5 is shown as 0
3. For more information about the crime types included in this table, see Section 5 of the User Guide

Table 2 Number of recorded crimes 2011/12 and percentage change

England and Wales

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. Police recorded crime statistics based on data from all 44 forces in England and Wales (including the British Transport Police)
2. Includes homicide, attempted murder, intentional destruction of viable unborn child, causing death by dangerous driving/careless driving when under the influence of drink or drugs, more serious wounding or other act endangering life (including grievous bodily harm with and without intent), causing death by aggravated vehicle taking and less serious wounding offences
3. Includes threat or conspiracy to murder, harassment, possession of weapons, other offences against children and assault without injury (formerly common assault where there is no injury)
4. Other theft includes a range of offences, including shoplifting and abstraction of electricity. The two sub-headings given here are provided for comparison purposes as they correspond to BCSEW categories
5. Firearm offences are provisional. Excludes offences involving the use of air weapons and offences recorded by British Transport Police. Includes crimes recorded by police where a firearm has been fired, used as a blunt instrument against a person or used as a threat

Notes for Summary

1. Using the preferred measure, for more detail on this measure see the section on crime experienced by children aged 10-15.

2. Homicide includes the offences of murder, manslaughter and infanticide. Homicide data are provisional figures supplied by the police as at 13^th June 2012. Final figures from the Homicide Index which takes account of further police investigations and court outcomes will be published in January 2013.

3. This refers to the offence group; ‘Other theft or unauthorised taking’.

4. Non-notifiable offences are not covered by the main police recorded crime collection. These are offences dealt with by the issuing of a Penalty Notice for Disorder, a Fixed Penalty Notice or a magistrates court. Along with non-notifiable offences dealt with by the police (such as speeding), these include many offences that may be dealt with by other agencies – for example, prosecutions by TV Licensing or by the DVLA for vehicle registration offences.

Overall level of crime

This quarterly release presents the most recent crime statistics from two different sources: the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW, previously known as the British Crime Survey), and police recorded crime¹. It also draws on data from other sources to provide a more comprehensive picture.

The CSEW was extended to cover children aged 10-15 in 2009 but commentary on trends is restricted to crimes against households and adults resident in them. The latest results relating to children can be found in the ‘Crime experienced by children aged 10 to 15’ section.

Based on interviews in the year April 2011 to March 2012 there was no statistically significant change in the level of CSEW crime compared with the previous year (Tables 3a and 3b). The overall level of notifiable² crime recorded by the police decreased by 4 per cent in 2011/12 compared with the previous year (Tables 4a and 4b). These latest figures represent a continuation of recent trends with the level of CSEW crime remaining at the same level in each of the last three surveys and police recorded crime figures continuing to show year-on-year reductions.

CSEW crime rose steadily from 1981 to 1991, before peaking in 1995 (Figure 3). Subsequently, CSEW showed marked falls up to the 2004/05 survey. The downward trend in CSEW crime continued, though at a much slower rate, until the 2009/10 survey with subsequent surveys showing no statistically significant change.

Figure 3 Trends in recorded crime and CSEW, 1981 to 2011/12

Source: Crime Survey for England and Wales - Office for National Statistics, Home Office

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Recorded crime also increased during most of the 1980s, reaching a peak in 1992, and then fell each year until 1998/99 when the expanded coverage and changes in the Home Office Counting Rules resulted in an increase in recorded offences; see Section 3 of the User Guide (483.8 Kb Pdf) . This was followed by the introduction of the National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) in April 2002 which led to a rise in recording in 2002/03 and 2003/04. Following the bedding in of these changes, trends have been generally more consistent between the two series since 2003/04, with the exception of some short term fluctuations in recent years.

Summary tables in this bulletin based on CSEW estimates show the latest figures and those from one year ago, five years ago and ten years ago, along with the change from the peak in CSEW crime. The equivalent police recorded crime tables show the latest totals and figures from one year ago, five years ago and since 2002/03 (the year in which the last major change in police recording practice occurred). Appendix tables A1–A4 (785 Kb Excel sheet) show the fuller time series.

Based on interviews in 2011/12, CSEW estimates of crime have halved since peak levels in 1995, representing nearly 10 million fewer crimes (Table 3a). CSEW crime now remains around the lowest level in 30 years, since the survey began. The past three year’s surveys have yielded estimates of approximately 9.5 million incidents per year, representing a period of stability following previous falls in crime (Figure 3). While there was no statistically significant³ change in the level of CSEW crime in the last two years, the latest figures represent a decrease of 14 per cent since the 2006/07 survey (Table 3b).

Table 3a All CSEW crime - number of incidents

Adults aged 16 and over/households

Table source: Office for National Statistics

Table notes:

1. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix tables A1, A2, A3.

Table 3b All CSEW crime - percentage change and statistical significance

Adults aged 16 and over/households, England and Wales

Table source: Office for National Statistics

Table notes:

1. Statistically significant change at the 5% level is indicated by an asterisk
2. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix tables A1, A2, A3

The overall level of crime recorded by the police has continued to follow the year-on-year pattern of reduction seen in recent years (Figure 3). There were just under 4 million offences recorded in 2011/12, the lowest number of offences since the introduction of the NCRS in 2002/03. The number of offences recorded in 2011/12 was 27 per cent lower than in 2006/07 and a third lower than in 2002/03 (Tables 4a and 4b).

Police recorded crime figures in this publication include the month of August 2011 when there were disturbances in a number of urban areas in England. As reported in previous analysis, at the national level the impact on police recorded figures was small⁴. 

Table 4a Total police recorded crime - number and rate of offences

England and Wales

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. Police recorded crime statistics based on data from all 44 forces in England and Wales (including the British Transport Police)
2. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix table A4

Table 4b Total police recorded crime - percentage change

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix table A4

Notes for Overall level of crime

1. It should be noted that police recorded crime has wider offence coverage than the CSEW as for example, it includes crimes against businesses and non-residents (for example, visitors, tourists), however, it does not include crimes that have not been reported to them.

2. Notifiable offences include all offences that could possibly be tried by a jury (these include some less serious offences, such as minor theft that would not usually be dealt with in this way) plus a few additional closely related offences, such as assault without injury.

3. See Section 8 of the User Guide (483.8 Kb Pdf) for more information on statistical significance.

4. Annex B of the January release ‘Crime in England and Wales: Quarterly Update to September 2011’ (Home Office, 2012a), outlines the impact the recording of these events had on police recorded crime statistics.

Violence

Violent crime covers a wide range of offences, from minor assaults such as pushing and shoving that result in no physical harm through to serious incidents of wounding and murder. Robbery, an offence in which violence or the threat of violence is used during a theft (or attempted theft) is not included in the police recorded violence against the person offence group. It is reported separately in the robbery section. Estimates of violence against 10 to 15 year olds can be found in the ‘Crime experienced by children aged 10 to 15’ section of this publication.

The CSEW showed no statistically significant change in the levels of violence (the apparent 7 per cent decrease was not statistically significant) based on interviews in 2011/12 (Table 5b). The latest CSEW estimates show there were 2 million violent incidents in England and Wales, and that levels have been fairly stable since 2007/08 (Figure 4).

Figure 4 Trends in CSEW violence, 1981 to 2011/12

Source: Crime Survey for England and Wales - Office for National Statistics

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Figure 4 shows increases in the number of violent incidents from the early eighties to 1995. This was followed by a period of steep decreases, with the latest estimates being 17 per cent lower than those observed from the 2006/07 survey, and 51 per cent lower than in 1995. The CSEW estimated 3 in every 100 adults were a victim of violent crime according to the 2011/12 survey, compared with 5 in 100 adults in 1995.

Although overall CSEW violence showed no statistically significant change since the previous year the sub-category of violence with injury decreased by 15 per cent compared with 2010/11. However, recent trends in violence with injury have been flat, and this fall represents a return to levels of the 2009/10 survey after higher estimates from the 2010/11 survey.

The level of violence against the person¹ recorded by the police in 2011/12 showed a 7 per cent fall, compared with the previous year (Tables 6a and 6b). Violence with and without injury decreased by 8 per cent and 6 per cent respectively. This is consistent with the downward trend seen since 2006/07. The latest levels of violence against the person have fallen by 27 per cent from 2006/07, and 10 per cent from 2002/03.

The 2011/12 police recorded crime figures also show notable declines in some of the more serious violent crimes (Appendix table A4). (785 Kb Excel sheet) Most notably:

• The number of homicides² recorded by the police in 2011/12 (550) fell by 14 percent compared with 2010/11. The number of homicides has increased from around 300 per year in the early 1960s to over 800 per year in the early years of this century³. More recently the number of homicides has fallen and these provisional data show that homicide is at its lowest level since 1983 (when 550 were also recorded) (Figure 5)⁴

Figure 5 Trends in number of homicides, 1960 to 2011/12

Source: Home Office

Notes:

1. The homicide figure for 2002/03 includes 172 homicides attributed to Harold Shipman in previous years but coming to light in the official inquiry in 2002.
2. The homicide figure in 2005/06 of 764 includes 52 homicide victims of the 7 July London bombings, which also accounted for approximately one-quarter of the total of 920 attempted murders.

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• The number of attempted murders recorded by the police also fell, down by 8 per cent in 2011/12 compared with the previous year (from 523 to 483 offences).

• Police recorded crime figures for 2011/12 showed reductions in grievous bodily harm with intent (GBH) and actual bodily harm (ABH), down compared with the previous year by 9 per cent (from 19,489 to 17,772 offences) and 8 per cent (from 328,463 to 301,216 offences) respectively.

Separate research conducted by the Violence and Society Research Group at Cardiff University (Sivarajasingam, et al., 2011) also indicates falls in the levels of violent crime. Findings from their annual survey, covering a sample of emergency departments and walk-in centres in England and Wales, showed an overall decrease of 4 per cent in violence-related attendances in 2011 compared with 2010. This pattern is consistent with the reductions in violent crime recorded by the police. In addition, NHS data on assault admissions to hospitals in England show that for the 12 months to the end of September 2011⁵ there were 40,033 hospital admissions for assault, a reduction of 2 per cent compared with figures for the preceding 12 months.

Table 5a CSEW violence - number and percentage of incidents

Adults ages 16 and over, England and Wales

Table source: Office for National Statistics

Table notes:

1. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix tables A1, A2, A3.

Table 5b CSEW violence - percentage change and statistical significance

Adults aged 16 and over, England and Wales

Table source: Office for National Statistics

Table notes:

1. Statistically significant change at the 5% level is indicated by an asterisk.
2. The percentage point change presented in the tables may differ from subtraction of the two percentages due to rounding.
3. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix tables A1, A2, A3.

Table 6a Police recorded violence - number and rate of offences

England and Wales

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. Police recorded crime statistics based on data from all 44 forces in England and Wales (including the British Transport Police).
2. Includes homicide, attempted murder, intentional destruction of viable unborn child, causing death by dangerous driving/careless driving when under the influence of drink or drugs, more serious wounding or other act endangering life (including grievous bodily harm with and without intent), causing death by aggravated vehicle taking and less serious wounding offences.
3. Includes threat or conspiracy to murder, harassment, possession of weapons, other offences against children and assault without injury (formerly common assault where there is no injury).
4. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix table A4.

Table 6b Police recorded violence - percentage change

England and Wales

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. Includes homicide, attempted murder, intentional destruction of viable unborn child, causing death by dangerous driving/careless driving when under the influence of drink or drugs, more serious wounding or other act endangering life (including grievous bodily harm with and without intent), causing death by aggravated vehicle taking and less serious wounding offences.
2. Includes threat or conspiracy to murder, harassment, possession of weapons, other offences against children and assault without injury (formerly common assault where there is no injury).
3. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix table A4.

Notes for Violence

1. Unlike the CSEW measure of violence, police recorded violence against the person does not include sexual offences or robbery but does include a range of state based offences such as possession of weapons. Refer to section 5 of the User Guide (483.8 Kb Pdf) for more information regarding coverage of crime measures.

2. Homicide includes the offences of murder, manslaughter and infanticide. Homicide data are provisional figures supplied by the police as at 13 June 2012. Final figures from the Homicide Index which takes account of further police investigations and court outcomes will be published in January 2013.

3. Homicide figures were not thought to be affected by changes in police recording practice so it is possible to examine longer-term trends from police recorded crime.

4. For international comparisons of homicide see Trends in crime; a short story.

5. Based on the latest available Hospital Episode Statistics.

Robbery

Robbery is an offence in which force or the threat of force is used either during or immediately prior to a theft or attempted theft. The small number of robbery victims interviewed in any one year means that CSEW estimates are prone to fluctuation. The number of robberies recorded by the police provides a more robust indication of trends than the CSEW.

Robbery is a relatively low volume crime accounting for around 2 per cent of all police recorded crime. These offences are concentrated in a small number of metropolitan forces with around half of all offences recorded in London, and 15 per cent in the Greater Manchester and West Midlands Police force areas.

Figure 6 Trends in police recorded robberies, 2002/03 to 2011/12

Source: Home Office

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The latest figures show police recorded robberies decreased by 2 per cent in 2011/12 compared with the previous year (Tables 7a and 7b). With the exception of a notable rise in the number of robberies in 2005/06 and 2006/07 there was a general downward trend between 2002/03 and 2009/10. Over the last three years the trend has been fairly flat, with around 75,000 robbery offences recorded in each of these years – representing the lowest levels since the introduction of the NCRS in 2002/03 (Figure 6).

Table 7a Police recorded robbery - number and rate of offences

England and Wales

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. Police recorded crime statistics based on data from all 44 forces in England and Wales (including the British Transport Police).

2. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix table A4.

Table 7b Police recorded robbery - percentage change

England and Wales

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix table A4.

In 2011/12, 91 per cent of robberies recorded by the police were of personal property. The police recorded 67,920 of these offences in 2011/12, down 1 per cent compared with 2010/11. Robbery of business property, which make up the remaining 9 per cent of total robbery offences, fell by 12 per cent compared with 2010/11 continuing a recent downward trend. In 2011/12, 22 per cent of robberies recorded by the police involved a knife or other sharp instrument, showing no change from the proportion in 2010/11 (Table 8).

The geographic concentration of robbery means that trends across England and Wales tend to reflect what is happening in a small number of metropolitan areas, and the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) area in particular. Although there is substantial short term fluctuation in levels of robbery, the MPS has recorded two consecutive year-on-year increases in robbery, up 8 per cent in 2011/12 compared with 2010/11, following a 7 per cent increase between 2010/11 and 2009/10.

Thus the decrease across England and Wales in 2011/12, compared with 2010/11, has been driven by falls in robbery in other large metropolitan police forces, most notably West Midlands (down 20 per cent) and Greater Manchester (down 14 per cent).

Offences involving knives and sharp instruments

Data for selected serious offences recorded by the police involving the use of a knife or sharp instrument have been collected for a number of years¹. Only data for the last two years are compared in this section because up until April 2010 there were known inconsistencies in recording practices between forces².

In 2011/12, the police recorded 30,999 offences involving a knife or sharp instrument, a 5 per cent decrease compared with 2010/11 (Table 8), similar to the 4 per cent fall seen in the overall number of crimes recorded by the police. Analysis of selected individual offence groups shows that the fall in knife or sharp instrument offences is largely due to reductions in the numbers of ABH and GBH offences, which showed a 9 per cent reduction compared with 2010/11, consistent with overall reductions in these offences.

Table 8 Number and proportion of selected violent and sexual offences involving a knife or sharp instrument recorded by the police<2>

Numbers and Percentages, England and Wales

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. Police recorded crime statistics based on data from all 44 forces in England and Wales (including the British Transport Police).
2. Police recorded knife and sharp instrument offences data are submitted via an additional special collection. Proportions of offences involving the use of a knife or sharp instrument presented in this table are calculated based on figures submitted in this special collection. Other offences exist that are not shown in this table that may include the use of a knife or sharp instrument.
3. Three police forces include unbroken bottle and glass offences in their returns, which are outside the scope of this special collection. As such, data for these forces are not directly comparable to data for other forces. The three forces are: Surrey, Sussex and British Transport Police.
4. Includes wounding or carrying out an act endangering life.
5. Sexual assault includes indecent assault on a male/female and sexual assault on a male/female (all ages).
6. Homicide offences are those currently recorded by the police as at 13 June 2012 and are subject to revision as cases are dealt with by the police and by the courts, or as further information becomes available.

The use of knives or sharp instruments also decreased among all other specified crime groups in 2011/12 compared with 2010/11, with the exception of attempted murder. The relatively low number of attempted murders, homicides, rape and sexual assaults that involve the use of a knife or sharp instrument means percentage changes based on small numbers should be interpreted with caution.

The proportion of selected violent offences involving a knife or sharp instrument in 2011/12 was 7 per cent, the same as the rate observed in 2010/11 (Table 8).

Notes for Offences involving knives and sharp instruments

1. A sharp instrument is any object that pierces the skin (or in the case of a threat, is capable of piercing the skin), for example, a broken bottle.

2. West Midlands Police force included unbroken bottle and glass offences in their returns but now exclude these offences in line with other forces.

Offences involving firearms

Provisional statistics for 2011/12 are available for police recorded crimes involving the use of firearms other than air weapons (referred to as ‘firearm offences’). Firearms are taken to be involved in an incident if they are fired, used as a blunt instrument against a person or used as a threat.

Provisional figures for 2011/12 show that 5,911 firearm offences were recorded in England and Wales, a 16 per cent decrease from 2010/11 (7,023) (Tables 9a and 9b). Of the firearm offences recorded in 2011/12, 39 resulted in a fatal injury, compared with 59 recorded in 2010/11. The 59 fatal injuries recorded in 2010/11 included the 12 people killed by Derrick Bird in Cumbria in June 2010 (Annual trend and demographic table D19 (1.33 Mb Excel sheet) ).

Figure 7 shows the trend from 2002/03, and indicates that since 2005/06 there has been a steady decrease in the number of firearm offences (Smith, et al., 2012). The number of offences involving firearms recorded by the police has fallen by 39 per cent from 2006/07 (Table 9b).

Table 9a Police recorded firearm offences<2> - numbers

England and Wales

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. Police recorded crime statistics based on data from all 44 forces in England and Wales (including the British Transport Police).
   
2. Firearms are provisional. Excludes offences involving the use of air weapons and offences recorded by British Transport Police. Includes crimes recorded by police where a firearm has been fired, used as a blunt instrument against a person or used as a threat.
   
3. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix table A4.

Table 9b Police recorded firearm offences<1> - percentage change

Percentage change, England and Wales

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. Firearms are provisional. Excludes offences involving the use of air weapons and offences recorded by British Transport Police. Includes crimes recorded by
2. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix table A4.

Figure 7 Trends in recorded crimes involving firearms other than air weapons, 2002/03 to 2011/12

Source: Home Office

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Sexual offences

It is difficult to obtain reliable information on the extent of sexual offences as it is known that a high proportion of offences are not reported to the police and increases in recorded figures may reflect changes in reporting rates rather than victimisation. For these reasons, caution should be used when interpreting trends in these offences (for more information see Chaplin, et al., 2011).

Police recorded crime figures showed a fall of 2 per cent in all sexual offences in 2011/12 compared with the previous year (Tables 10a and 10b). The most serious sexual crime (including rape and sexual assault) also decreased between 2010/11 and 2011/12 (by 2 per cent). This latest reduction follows rises in the number of sexual offences recorded the police in 2009/10 and 2010/11 proceeded by longer-term reductions since 2005/06 ( Appendix table A4 (785 Kb Excel sheet) ).

Police forces have been taking steps to improve the reporting and recording of rape and other sexual offences. Extra guidance for the recording of sexual offences was incorporated into the Home Office Counting Rules from 1 April 2010 and this reflected good practice guidance issued by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO). This is likely to have been a factor driving year-on-year increases seen in the number of sexual offences recorded in 2009/10 and 2010/11.

Table 10a Police recorded sexual offences - number and rate of offences

England and Wales

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. Police recorded crime statistics based on data from all 44 forces in England and Wales (including the British Transport Police).
2. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix table A4.

Table 10b Police recorded sexual offences - percentage change

Percentage change, England and Wales

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix table A4.

Due to the small number of sexual offences identified in the main CSEW crime count results are too unreliable to report. Since 2004/05 the CSEW has included a self-completion questionnaire module on intimate violence¹ . Findings from this module of the 2011/12 CSEW are summarised in Annual trend and demographic tables D15-D17 (1.33 Mb Excel sheet) .  More detailed data on intimate violence will be published by ONS in January 2013.

Notes for Sexual offences

1. See section 5 of the User Guide for more information regarding intimate violence.

Burglary

Despite some fluctuations from year to year, the underlying trend in burglary has remained fairly flat in the CSEW since 2004/05 (Figure 8). The apparent six per cent fall based on CSEW interviews in 2011/12 compared with the previous year was not statistically significant (Tables 11a and 11b).

Figure 8 Trends in CSEW domestic burglary, 1981 to 2011/12

Source: Crime Survey for England and Wales - Office for National Statistics

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Prior to 2004/05 there were notable declines in CSEW burglary, and estimates from the 2011/12 survey are 27 per cent lower than those from 2001/02, and 60 per cent lower than in 1995. This reduction is reflected in the percentage of households that had been victims of burglary in the last year, with 2 in 100 households being victims according to the 2011/12 survey compared with 6 in 100 households in 1995. Households are thus now three times less likely to be a victim of burglary than in 1995.

Comparing 2011/12 with 2010/11, police recorded domestic burglaries decreased by 5 per cent while other burglary (which includes those against businesses) decreased by 3 per cent (Tables 12a and 12b). Levels of burglary recorded by the police have fallen by 44 per cent since 2002/03.

Table 11a CSEW burglary - number and percentage of incidents

Households, England and Wales

Table source: Office for National Statistics

Table notes:

1. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix tables A1, A2, A3

Table 11b CSEW burglary - percentage change and statistical significance

Households, England and Wales

Table source: Office for National Statistics

Table notes:

1. Statistically significant change at the 5% level is indicated by an asterisk
2. The percentage point change presented in the tables may differ from subtraction of the two percentages due to rounding
3. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix tables A1, A2, A3

Table 12a Police recorded burglary - number and rate of offences

England and Wales

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. Police recorded crime statistics based on data from all 44 forces in England and Wales (including the British Transport Police)
2. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix table A4

Table 12b Police recorded burglary - percentage change

England and Wales

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix table A4

Vehicle offences

The 2011/12 CSEW estimated that vehicle-related theft was at a similar level to the 2010/11 survey; the apparent 2 per cent increase was not statistically significant (Tables 13a and 13b). The latest estimates indicate that there were 1.2 million vehicle-related thefts in England and Wales, and that levels have been stable over the last three years (Figure 9). Prior to this, the CSEW indicated a consistent downward trend in levels of vehicle-related theft, with the latest estimates being 26 per cent lower than those observed by the 2006/07 survey, and 51 per cent lower than the 2001/02 CSEW.

The rate of reduction in vehicle offences since the mid-1990s has been striking. The latest estimates indicate that a vehicle-owning household was 4 times less likely to become a victim of vehicle-related theft than in 1995, with 5 in 100 households being victims in the last year according to the 2011/12 survey compared with 20 in 100 households in 1995.

Figure 9 Trends in CSEW vehicle-releated theft, 1981 to 2011/12

Source: Crime Survey for England and Wales - Office for National Statistics

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Police recorded crime figures showed a fall of 7 per cent in offences against vehicles in 2011/12 compared with the previous year (Tables 14a and 14b). This follows substantial decreases in this offence group with falls of 45 per cent since 2006/07 and 61 per cent compared with 2002/03, similar to CSEW trends. The most recent data show that all three categories of police recorded offences against vehicles continued to fall, with theft of a motor vehicle falling by 13 per cent in 2011/12 compared with the previous year.

Table 13a CSEW vehicle offences - number and percentage of incidents

Vehicle-owning households, England and Wales

Table source: Office for National Statistics

Table notes:

1. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix tables A1, A2, A3

Table 13b CSEW vehicle offences - percentage change and statistical significance

Vehicle-owning households, England and Wales

Table source: Office for National Statistics

Table notes:

1. Statistically significant change at the 5% level is indicated by an asterisk
2. The percentage point change presented in the tables may differ from subtraction of the two percentages due to rounding
3. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix tables A1, A2, A3

Table 14a Police recorded vehicle offences - number and rate of offences

England and Wales

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. Police recorded crime statistics based on data from all 44 forces in England and Wales (including the British Transport Police).
2. Includes theft of motor vehicle, theft from a vehicle, aggravated vehicle taking and interfering with a motor vehicle.
3. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix table A4.

Table 14b Police recorded vehicle offences - percentage change

Percentage change, England and Wales

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix table A4.

Other theft of property

The CSEW and police recorded crime also measure other theft of household and personal property, in addition to burglary and vehicle-related thefts. In the CSEW this comprises: theft from the person, other theft of personal property, bicycle theft and other household theft. Figure 10 shows trends in selected offences which are subject to further discussion below.

Although there are substantial overlaps between the two data series the coverage of other theft offences in police recorded crime is broader than that of the CSEW as, for example, it also includes theft against commercial victims and offences of handling stolen goods. The offences that contribute to police recorded other theft crimes are listed in Appendix table A4. (785 Kb Excel sheet)

Other theft offences recorded by the police

This offence group makes up more than a quarter of all crime recorded by the police. The most recent data for other theft offences as recorded by the police showed a 2 per cent increase compared with 2010/11 with a rise evident in most force areas (Tables 16a and 16b).

Figure 10 Trends in police recorded other theft offences, 2002/03 to 2011/12

Source: Home Office

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This follows on from a 4 per cent increase between 2009/10 and 2010/11. However, over a longer period there have been notable reductions in other theft recorded by the police, with levels recorded in 2009/10 reaching their lowest point since 2002/03 (Figure 10).

Increases in other theft or unauthorised taking, theft from the person and bicycle theft offences recorded by the police contributed to the increase in other theft and are discussed further below. In addition to these offence types, the number of shoplifting offences recorded by the police has also seen a small increase - up 1 per cent compared with 2010/11 (Table 16a and 16b).

Figure 11 Trends in CSEW theft from the person and other household theft, 1981 to 2011/12

Source: Crime Survey for England and Wales - Office for National Statistics

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Theft from the person

Theft from the person (for example, pick-pocketing) is a relatively low volume offence type which is subject to notable fluctuations from year to year. The majority of these thefts are made up of stealth thefts where at the time of the offence the individuals were unaware that the items they were carrying were being stolen.

The CSEW showed no significant change in theft from the person based on interviews in 2011/12 compared with the previous year (the apparent 11 per cent increase from 2010/11 was not statistically significant) (Table 15a and 15b). Longer-term comparisons suggest a relatively flat trend (Figure 11). However, the last two years have seen non-statistically significant increases which might represent an emerging upward trend, though it is too early to draw firm conclusions at this stage.

Police recorded crime figures for theft from the person shows an 8 per cent increase comparing 2011/12 with 2010/11 (Tables 16a and 16b). Similarly to the CSEW this police recorded crime category is a relatively low volume offence type and accounts for 3 per cent of overall police recorded crime.

These latest figures represent the first notable year-on-year increases in this offence group following marked falls in number of thefts from the person offences recorded by the police since 2002/03. However, the number of theft from the person offences recorded in 2011/12 remains 12 per cent lower than in 2006/07 and 32 per cent lower than in 2002/03¹.

Other household theft

This offence group consists of items stolen from outside the victim’s home as well as burglaries from non-connected buildings, such as sheds, and thefts in the victim’s dwelling by someone entitled to be there, for example a workman². Around half of these incidents involve theft of garden furniture or household items/furniture which are taken from outside the dwelling; these thefts are generally opportunistic in nature.

Based on CSEW interviews in 2011/12 it was estimated that there were nearly 1.4 million incidents of other household theft (Table 15a), making up 14 per cent of the overall CSEW crime. While the apparent 10 per cent increase compared with 2010/11 was not statistically significant, CSEW estimates indicate an upward trend in other household theft since the 2007/08 survey (Figure 11).

Longer-term comparisons show that CSEW estimates of other household theft have increased by 17 per cent since the 2006/07 survey, though this should be seen in the context of prior reductions. Thus figures from the 2011/12 survey for this type of theft are 38 per cent lower than in 1995. The percentage of adults who were victims of other household theft showed a statistically significant increase based on interviews in 2011/12 and the previous year (Table 15b).

Other theft of personal property

There were an estimated 1,090,000 incidents of other theft of personal property in the 2011/12 CSEW. These are theft offences which involve items stolen away from the home whilst not being carried by the victim (such as theft of unattended property in pubs, restaurants, entertainment venues, workplaces, etc).

Estimates have fluctuated in recent years and the apparent ten per cent increase compared to the 2010/11 survey was not statistically significant. Looking at the longer-term trend, theft of other personal property saw marked declines from the mid-1990s and levels have halved compared with the 1995 CSEW ( Appendix table A1 (785 Kb Excel sheet) ).

Bicycle theft

The number of incidents of CSEW bicycle theft, based on interviews in 2011/12, decreased by 15 per cent compared with the previous year (Tables 15a and 15b). This is one of the lower volume CSEW offence groups, and can show large fluctuations from year to year. The longer-term trend in CSEW bicycle theft gives some indication of increases over the last ten years, though variability in estimates means that a clear pattern is difficult to discern ( Appendix table A1 (785 Kb Excel sheet) ). 

Bicycle thefts recorded by the police rose by 6 per cent in 2011/12 compared with the previous year (Tables 16a and 16b). It is too early to say whether this represents an emerging upward trend as the longer-term trend is fairly stable, with numbers of bicycle thefts recorded by the police showing small fluctuations around the current level (115,905 offences in 2011/12) for most of the last decade. It should be noted that the 19 per cent increase compared with 2002/03 shown in table 16 is a result of comparisons against relatively low volumes of bicycle thefts in that year (97,755).

Other theft or unauthorised taking offences recorded by the police

The main driver of the increase seen in the offence group other theft is the subcategory other theft or unauthorised taking. This subcategory saw a two per cent rise in 2011/12 compared with the previous year (Tables 16a and 16b). This compares with a 10 per cent rise between 2009/10 and 2010/11, with the latest figures indicating a slowing rate of increase ( Appendix table A4 (785 Kb Excel sheet) ).

These offences involve theft of unattended property and as figures include theft of both personal property (such as unattended wallets and phones), and property from outside people’s homes (for example garden furniture and tools) there is some overlap with CSEW categories of other personal theft and other household theft.

This police recorded crime category also includes crimes against organisations which are not covered by the CSEW, such as theft of metal or industrial equipment. It is not possible to identify these specific types of theft in centrally held police recorded crime data, but it is likely that the widely reported increases in metal theft seen over the last two years have been an important contributor to the recent rises in other theft or unauthorised taking.

Table 15a CSEW other theft of property - number and percentage of incidents

Adults aged 16 and over/households, England and Wales

Table source: Office for National Statistics

Table notes:

1. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix tables A1, A2, A3.

Table 15b CSEW other theft of property - percentage change and statistical significance

Adults aged 16 and over/households, England and Wales

Table source: Office for National Statistics

Table notes:

1. Statistically significant change at the 5% level is indicated by an asterisk.
2. The percentage point change presented in the tables may differ from subtraction of the two percentages due to rounding.
3. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix tables A1, A2, A3.

Table 16a Police recorded other theft - number and rate of offences

England and Wales

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. Police recorded crime statistics based on data from all 44 forces in England and Wales (including the British Transport Police).
2. For full range of offences included in other theft please see Appendix table A4
3. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix table A4.

Table 16b Police recorded other theft - percentage change

England and Wales

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. For full range of offences included in other theft please see Appendix table A4
2. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix table A4

Notes for Other theft of property

1. Personal theft against 10 to 15 year olds sampled by the CSEW can be found in the 10 to 15 year old section of this publication.

2. For more details on the offences that constitute CSEW other household theft see Chapter 5 and Appendix 3 of the User Guide (483.8 Kb Pdf) .

Vandalism and criminal damage

Based on CSEW interviews in 2011/12 there were 2 million incidents of vandalism of personal and household property, a statistically significant decrease of 6 per cent from 2010/11 (Tables 17a and 17b). Figure 12 shows the CSEW long-term trend for vandalism. Vandalism offences peaked in 1993 at 3.4 million followed by a fall until the 2003/04 survey (2.4 million).

This was followed by a period of increases until the 2006/07 CSEW, after which the number of incidents fell to 2 million in the 2011/12 survey. Damage to personal property experienced by 10 to 15 year olds can be found in the ‘Crime experienced by children aged 10-15’ section of this publication.

Tables 17a and 17b show the recent downward trend in this offence group, with statistically significant decreases compared with both 2006/07 and 2001/02. This downward trend in incidents is also reflected in the percentage of households victimised once or more, 6 in 100 households were victims of vandalism compared with 10 in 100 households in 1995.

Figure 12 Trends in CSEW vandalism, 1981 to 2011/12

Source: Crime Survey for England and Wales - Office for National Statistics

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Police recorded crime also shows reductions in the similar offence group of criminal damage. In 2011/12 there were 631,221 offences recorded, a fall of 10 per cent from 2010/11 (Tables 18a and 18b). Reductions were seen within all offence types comprising police recorded criminal damage. Criminal damage offences have seen a marked fall since 2007/08 whereas previously the pattern had been fairly flat since 2002/03.

Table 17a CSEW vandalism- number and percentage of incidents

Households, England and Wales

Table source: Office for National Statistics

Table notes:

1. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix tables A1, A2, A3.

Table 17b CSEW vandalism - percentage change and statistical significance

Households, England and Wales

Table source: Office for National Statistics

Table notes:

1. Statistically significant change at the 5% level is indicated by an asterisk.
2. The percentage point change presented in the tables may differ from subtraction of the two percentages due to rounding.
3. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix tables A1, A2, A3.

Table 18a Police recorded criminal damage offences - number and rate

England and Wales

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. Police recorded crime statistics based on data from all 44 forces in England and Wales (including the British Transport Police).
2. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix table A4.

Table 18b Police recorded criminal damage offences - percentage change

England and Wales

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix table A4.

Other police recorded offences

Table 19a shows the number of offences and rates per 1,000 population for the other police recorded crime groups; drug and other miscellaneous offences and table 19b shows the percentage change.

Table 19a Police recorded other offences - numbers and rates

England and Wales

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. Police recorded crime statistics based on data from all 44 forces in England and Wales (including the British Transport Police).
2. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix table A4.

Table 19b Police recorded other offences - percentage change

England and Wales

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. For detailed footnotes and all years data see Appendix table A4.

Drug offences recorded by the police decreased by 2 per cent in 2011/12 compared with the previous year. Since 2002/03 the number of offences recorded has increased by 60 per cent to 229,103 in 2011/12 and by 18 per cent from 2006/07.

 The number of drugs offences recorded by the police is heavily dependent on police activities and priorities. As a result changes over time may reflect changes in the policing of drug crime rather than real changes in its incidence. In recent years the police were given powers:

• To issues warnings on the street (rather than at a police station) for possession of cannabis offences (April 2004).

• To issue penalty notices for disorder for possession of cannabis (January 2009).

In 2011/12 as in 2010/11, possession of cannabis offences accounted for around 70 per cent of all police recorded drug offences.

Crime figures recorded by the police includes an ‘other miscellaneous offences’ category. This constituted less than 2 per cent of all recorded crime in 2011/12, and contains a variety of offences from those against the state to perverting the course of justice, and going equipped for stealing. The latest figures show a year on year reduction of 10 per cent in these offences.

Fraud

The extent of fraud is difficult to measure because it is a deceptive crime, often targeted at organisations rather than individuals. Victims of fraud may be unaware they have been a victim of crime, or may be unaware that any fraudulent activity has occurred. As such, many incidents of fraud may not be reported to the police or recalled by CSEW respondents.

Fraud is also inherently different from other crimes in that one fraud offence can potentially affect thousands of victims. It may also be difficult to ascertain where the offence originated or took place (for example, via cyberspace).

The National Statistician’s review of crime statistics in June 2011 identified fraud as one of the more important gaps in crime statistics and recommended that data from additional sources should be provided alongside existing available data. This section draws on a range of sources including police recorded crime, the CSEW and the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB). Together these help to provide a fuller picture (yet still incomplete). For more information on the different sources of fraud data, see section 5.4 of the User Guide (483.8 Kb Pdf) .

In 2011/12 the police recorded 141,241 fraud and forgery offences, a decrease of 3 per cent compared with the 145,913 offences recorded in 2010/11 (Tables 20a and 20b). Changes to the way in which police record crimes of fraud and forgery following the introduction of the Fraud Act 2006 mean that year on year comparisons are only possible from 2007/08 onwards (for more details see section 5.4 of the User Guide (483.8 Kb Pdf) ).

Since peaking in 2008/09, the number of police recorded fraud and forgery offences have decreased each year within this comparable period, although other sources suggest that this does not reflect the real trend in this type of offence.

Table 20a Recorded crime - Fraud and forgery offences

England and Wales

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. Police recorded crime statistics based on all data from all 44 forces in England and Wales (including the British Transport Police)

Table 20b Recorded crime - Fraud and forgery offences

England and Wales

Table source: Home Office

Table notes:

1. Police recorded crime statistics based on all data from all 44 forces in England and Wales (including the British Transport Police)

‘Action Fraud’ is the public face of the NFIB and acts as a national reporting centre that records incidents of fraud directly from the public and organisations. It was created to provide support and fraud prevention advice to victims and to enable a co-ordinated approach to analysing and tackling fraud. In time it will take over full responsibility from the police for recording selected fraud offences.

During 2011/12, five police forces began feeding selected fraud offences to Action Fraud and the plan is for this to be extended to all forces in England and Wales during 2012/13. Changes in police recorded crime figures should therefore be taken in context of the known under-reporting of fraud to the police and the continuing decline in police recorded crime figures as recording transfers to Action Fraud. Some fraud and forgery offences will continue to be recorded by the police. See section 5.4 of the User Guide (483.8 Kb Pdf)  for more details on police recorded fraud and forgery.

The NFIB collates and analyses data from Action Fraud, CIFAS (a UK-wide fraud prevention service) and the UK Cards Association (the trade association for the card payments industry in the UK) and will be sourcing data from additional financial and fraud prevention institutions in the future. These data are not National Statistics and are subject to ongoing development before they should be seen as providing an authoritative measure of fraud. In the future, these data will be higher in volume as all police forces in England and Wales record relevant fraud offences via Action Fraud.

The NFIB reported 421,146 incidents of fraud in the UK in 2011/12 (Table 21, Appendix table A5 (785 Kb Excel sheet)  for a full breakdown of NFIB fraud offences by type). As some NFIB data sources are UK-wide it is not possible to report these data for England and Wales only due to the difficulty in determining where a fraud offence occurred.

Table 21 Fraud offences recorded by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau 2011/12 (non-National Statistics)

United Kingdom

Table notes:

1. The source for Table 21 is National Fraud Intelligence Bureau

Three-quarters of the fraud offences recorded by the NFIB are banking and payment related and involve cheque, plastic card and online bank accounts. This proportion may change as more police forces pass responsibility for recording fraud offences to Action Fraud. Some categories are currently supplied with data from Action Fraud only, for example computer misuse (hacking, viruses) and advance fee fraud (where a victim is encouraged to make a payment for something that never materialises).

These are more likely to show increases than those that are already populated by industry sources such as banking and payment related fraud by the UK Cards Association and telecommunications industry fraud by CIFAS. For more information on the types of offences within each of the NFIB categories see section 5.4 of the User Guide (483.8 Kb Pdf)  and Appendix table A5 (785 Kb Excel sheet) .

Elements of banking and payment related fraud are the focus of a module of questions in the CSEW, which asks respondents about their experience of plastic card fraud. The 2011/12 CSEW showed that 4.7 per cent of plastic card owners were victims of card fraud in the last year, down from the 5.2 per cent reported in 2010/11 (Figure 13).

This is the second consecutive annual fall and sees the number of victims of plastic card fraud return to the level measured in 2007/08. Nevertheless, this level of victimisation remains significantly higher than more established acquisitive offences such as theft from the person and other theft of personal property (1.3 per cent and 2.1 per cent respectively, Table 15a CSEW acquisitive crime).

Figure 13 Proportion of plastic card users who had been a victim of plastic card fraud in the last year, 2005/06 to 2011/12 CSEW

Source: Crime Survey for England and Wales - Office for National Statistics

Notes:

1. Data for 2006/07 are not shown as the module of questions on plastic card fraud was not included in the 2006/07 CSEW.

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The CSEW pattern of recent consecutive falls returning to levels to those measured in 2007/08 is consistent with trends reported by the UK Cards Association. They reported plastic card fraud losses of £341 million for UK-issued cards in 2011. Despite increases in plastic card usage and the number of transactions taking place, this was a decrease of 7 per cent from the £365 million reported for 2010, and a decrease of 44 per cent from a peak of £610 million recorded in 2008¹.

The industry suggests that a combination of the use of fraud screening detection tools by retailers, banks and the cards industry, the introduction of chip and pin technology, enhanced user and industry awareness and improved prevention and detection initiatives have led to the decrease in plastic card fraud. More detailed information including a breakdown of plastic card fraud by type in the UK and abroad is available from the UK Cards Association.

Notes for Fraud

1. The UK Cards Association collates data on credit card, debit card and online banking fraud. The NFIB dataset contains UK Cards Association incidents of confirmed fraud with losses only.

Crime experienced by children aged 10-15

Since January 2009 the CSEW has asked children aged 10 to 15 resident in households in England and Wales about their experience of crime in the previous 12 months. Preliminary results from the first calendar year were published in 2010 (Millard and Flatley) and following a user consultation these statistics were refined further.

The results for 2010/11 were published in two reports (Chaplin, et al and Smith, et al). The questionnaire was refined again for the 2011/12 survey. The changes to the questions and definitions used should be borne in mind when interpreting the figures and hence no statistical assessment of change in levels of victimisation between the years is presented (see Further Information Section for more details). Methodological differences also mean that direct comparisons cannot be made between the adult and child data (Millard and Flatley).

Figures are shown from the latest three financial years using two approaches to measuring crime. The ‘Preferred measure’ takes into account factors identified as important in determining the severity of an incident (such as relationship to the offender and level of injury or value of item stolen or damaged). The ‘Broad measure’ also includes minor offences between children and family members that would not normally be treated as criminal matters. Results commented on in this section refer only to the preferred measure of crime although the tables show both figures for completeness. More details about these two measures can be found in the Further Information Section.

Overall level of crime

Based on CSEW interviews in 2011/12, there were an estimated 1.0 million crimes experienced by children aged 10 to 15 using the preferred measure; of this number just over one-half were violent crimes (566,000) while most of the remaining crimes were thefts of personal property (419,000). Incidents of vandalism of personal property experienced by children were less common (39,000 crimes).

Fifteen per cent of children aged 10 to 15 had been a victim of any crime covered by the CSEW in the past 12 months, 8 per cent had been a victim of a violent crime and 8 per cent had been a victim of personal theft. (Tables 22 to 24).

Table 22 Offences experienced by children aged 10 to 15

England and Wales

Table source: Office for National Statistics

Table notes:

1. The ‘Preferred measure’ takes into account factors identified as important in determining the severity of an incidence (such as level of injury, value of item stolen or damaged, relationship with the perpetrator) while the ‘Broad measure’ counts all incidents which would be legally defined as crimes and therefore may include low-level incidents between children. For more details see Further Information Section.
   
2. Numbers are derived by multiplying offence rates by 3,862,869 children aged 10 to 15 in England and Wales (Office for National Statistics, estimate for 2009).
   
3. Numbers are derived by multiplying offence rates by 3,809,893 children aged 10 to 15 in England and Wales (Office for National Statistics, mid-2010 projection for 2010).
   
4. Numbers are derived by multiplying offence rates by 3,753,871 children aged 10 to 15 in England and Wales (Office for National Statistics, mid-2010 projection for 2011).
   

5. Some estimates are based on a small number of children hence caution should be applied; see User Guide table UG6 and UG8 for the margin of error around these estimates.

Violent offences

The 2011/12 CSEW estimates that there were 566,000 violent offences against children aged 10 to 15. The majority (69 per cent) of these violent incidents resulted in injury to the victim (the majority being minor bruising or black eyes). In comparison, about 50 per cent of violent incidents among adults aged 16 or over resulted in injury to the victim (Table 5a).

Eight per cent of children aged 10 to 15 had experienced violent crime in the last year; 5 per cent had experienced violence with injury (Table 5b).

One per cent of children aged 10 to 15 were victims of robbery in the last year.

Table 23 Violent offences experienced by children aged 10 to 15

England and Wales

Table source: Office for National Statistics

Table notes:

1. The ‘Preferred measure’ takes into account factors identified as important in determining the severity of an incidence (such as level of injury, value of item stolen or damaged, relationship with the perpetrator) while the ‘Broad measure’ counts all incidents which would be legally defined as crimes and therefore may include low-level incidents between children. For more details see Further Information Section.
   
2. Numbers are derived by multiplying offence rates by 3,862,869 children aged 10 to 15 in England and Wales (Office for National Statistics, estimate for 2009).
   
3. Numbers are derived by multiplying offence rates by 3,809,893 children aged 10 to 15 in England and Wales (Office for National Statistics, mid-2010 projection for 2010).
   
4. Numbers are derived by multiplying offence rates by 3,753,871 children aged 10 to 15 in England and Wales (Office for National Statistics, mid-2010 projection for 2011).
   
5. These offences are designated as 'unspecified' since only limited information was collected about these low-level offences in 2009/10 and 2010/11  (see Appendix 1 for more details).
   
6. For the years 2009/10 and 2010/11 'Violence without injury' includes unspecified crimes.
7. Violence with injury includes wounding, assault with minor injury and robbery where injury was sustained. Violence without injury includes assault without injury and robbery with no injury plus, for the ‘Broad measure’, the unspecified offences of aggressive behaviour and theft with threat or force (these involve no injury otherwise further information would have been collected during the interview).
   
8. Some estimates are based on a small number of children hence caution should be applied; see User Guide tables UG6 and UG8 for the margin of error around these estimates.

Property offences

There were an estimated 419,000 incidents of theft and 39,000 incidents of damage of personal property experienced by children aged 10 to 15 according to the 2011/12 survey. Three-fifths of the thefts were ‘other theft of personal property’ (253,000 incidents) which includes thefts of property left unattended while the child was away from the home.

Eight per cent of children aged 10 to 15 had experienced an incident of personal theft in the last year with ‘other theft of personal property’ most commonly experienced (5 per cent). Theft from the person (for example, pick-pocketing) was much less common with just 1 per cent of children reporting being victimised. A similar number of children had experienced criminal damage of personal property.

Table 24 Property offences experienced by children aged 10 to 15

England and Wales

Table source: Office for National Statistics

Table notes:

1. The ‘Preferred measure’ takes into account factors identified as important in determining the severity of an incidence (such as level of injury, value of item stolen or damaged, relationship with the perpetrator) while the ‘Broad measure’ counts all incidents which would be legally defined as crimes and therefore may include low-level incidents between children. For more details see Further Information Section
2. Numbers are derived by multiplying offence rates by 3,862,869 children aged 10 to 15 in England and Wales (Office for National Statistics, estimate for 2009)
3. Numbers are derived by multiplying offence rates by 3,809,893 children aged 10 to 15 in England and Wales (Office for National Statistics, mid-2010 projection for 2010)
4. Numbers are derived by multiplying offence rates by 3,753,871 children aged 10 to 15 in England and Wales (Office for National Statistics, mid-2010 projection for 2011)
   
5. These offences are designated as 'unspecified' since only limited information was collected about these low-level offences in 2009/10 and 2010/11  (see Appendix 1 for more details)
6. These offences are designated as 'household' offences for adults on the CSEW (respondents reply on behalf of the household) but are presented here as 'personal' offences when the property stolen or damaged solely belonged to the child respondent. This broadens the scope of personal victimisation but may also result in double-counting of offences on the adult survey; the extent to which this happens will be evaluated in the future
7. Some estimates are based on a small number of children hence caution should be applied; see User Guide tables UG6 and UG8 for the margin of error around these estimates

Anti-social behaviour

Incidents recorded by the police

The police record anti-social behaviour (ASB) incidents in accordance with the National Standard for Incident Recording (NSIR); for further details, see Chapter 5 of the User Guide (483.8 Kb Pdf) .

Figures relating to anti-social behaviour can be considered alongside police recorded (notifiable) crime to provide a more comprehensive view of the crime and disorder that comes to the attention of the police.

While incidents are recorded under NSIR in accordance with the same ‘victim focused’ approach that applies for recorded crime, these figures are not accredited National Statistics and are not subject to the same level of quality assurance as the main recorded crime collection. In particular, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) inspections found that there is greater variation in the recording of anti-social incidents across police forces than in recording notifiable offences.

The police recorded 2.7 million incidents of ASB in 2011/12. This compares to the 4.0 million notifiable crimes recorded by the police over the same period (Figure 14).

Data on ASB incidents in 2011/12 are not directly comparable with those in previous years, owing to a change in the classification used for ASB incidents. Figures for the period 2007/08 to 2010/11 show declines in the number of ASB incidents recorded by the police consistent with recent trends in total police recorded crime.

Figure 14 Police recorded crime and anti-social behaviour incidents, 2007/08 to 2011/12

Source: Home Office

Notes:

1. ASB figures are not accreditied National Statistics
2. ASB incidents exclude British Transport Police.
3. The ASB incidents source includes: Home Office, National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) and Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC).

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From 2011/12, a new set of three simplified categories for ASB was introduced (for further details, see Chapter 5 of the User Guide (483.8 Kb Pdf) ):

• ‘Nuisance’ - captures incidents where an act, condition, thing or person causes trouble, annoyance, irritation, inconvenience, offence or suffering to the local community in general rather than to individual victims.

• ‘Personal’ - captures incidents that are perceived as either deliberately targeted at an individual or group, or having an impact on an individual or group rather than the community at large.

• Environmental - captures incidents where individuals and groups have an impact on their surroundings, including natural, built and social environments.

In 2011/12, of ASB incidents categorised by the police, 64 per cent were identified as ‘Nuisance’; 29 per cent as ‘Personal’; and 8 per cent as ‘Environmental’ (Figure 15).

Figure 15 Categories of anti-social behaviour incidents, 2011/12 (non-National Statistics)

Source: Home Office

Notes:

1. ASB figures are not accreditied National Statistics
2. ASB incidents exclude British Transport Police
3. Some forces were unable to categorise all incidents of ASB. See Police force area table P15 for futher information

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CSEW measures of anti-social behaviour

The CSEW has long-standing questions asking respondents about perceptions of problems with different types of ASB in their local area. Seven of these questions are used to provide an overall index of perceived ASB.

In the 2011/12 CSEW, 15 per cent of respondents perceived there to be a high level of ASB in their local area, a small and non-statistically significant difference from 14 per cent in 2010/11 (Table 25).

There was very little change in adults’ perceptions of individual ASB strands between 2010/11 and 2011/12. The proportion of adults perceiving problems with rubbish or litter lying around increased from 28 per cent in 2010/11 to 30 per cent in 2011/12. Increases of 1 per cent were also recorded in relation to people using or dealing drugs and noisy neighbours or loud parties; all other strands showed no change from the previous year.

Longer-term trends indicate a prevailing decrease in the perceived level of ASB, with the exception of noisy neighbours and drunk or rowdy behaviour which remain relatively flat. Since 2006/07 the CSEW has consistently recorded around a quarter of adults regarding people being drunk or rowdy as a problem in the local area while around 1 in 10 in adults regard noisy neighbours or loud parties as problematic.

The most pronounced decline has been for the abandoned or burnt-out cars strand, which peaked at 25 per cent in 2002/03 and has subsequently fallen each year down to 4 per cent in 2010/11 and in 2011/12. Reductions in this indicator reflect the overall reduction in the composite measure over time (Table 25).

Table 25 Trends in the anti-social behaviour indicators, 2002/03 to 2011/12 CSEW

Adults aged 16 and over, England and Wales

Table source: Office for National Statistics

Table notes:

1. An asterisk represents a statistically significant change from 2010/11 to 2011/12

New questions about respondents’ actual experiences of ASB in their local area were added to the 2011/12 CSEW questionnaire. These questions ask whether the respondent has personally experienced or witnessed ASB in their local area, and if so, what types. Thirty per cent of respondents in the 2011/12 CSEW indicated that they had personally experienced or witnessed one of the ASB problems asked about in their local area in the previous year (Table 26).

Around one in nine respondents said they had personally experienced or witnessed drink related anti-social behaviour (12 per cent) and groups hanging around on the streets in their local area (11 per cent). Three types of anti-social behaviour were experienced or witnessed by less than one per cent of respondents; begging, vagrancy or homeless people (0.9 per cent), out of control or dangerous dogs (0.7 per cent) and people committing inappropriate or indecent sexual acts in public (0.3 per cent).

These figures might appear to suggest a disparity between perceptions of ASB and actual experience of such incidents, with around twice as many people experiencing or witnessing ASB compared with those who felt there was a high level of ASB in their local area. However, it is difficult to compare the two measures since the list of ASB categories used in the experience-based questions on ASB is more expansive than those asked of respondents in relation to their perceptions. In addition, it is likely someone can experience an ASB incident without necessarily believing that it is part of a problem in their local area, if, for example, it was a one-off or isolated occurrence.

Table 26 Experiences of anti-social behaviour, 2011/12 CSEW

Adults aged 16 and over, England and Wales

Table source: Office for National Statistics

Table notes:

1. Respondents can experience more than one type of anti-social behaviour, so percentages will not sum to the total that experienced/witnessed anti-social behaviour in their local area
   
2. Includes repeated/inappropriate use of fireworks; youths kicking/throwing balls in inappropriate areas; cycling/skateboarding in pedestrian areas or obstructing pavements; people throwing stones/bottles/eggs, etc
3. Includes inconvenient/illegal parking; abandoned vehicles; speeding cars/motorcycles; car revving; joyriding, etc

Other non-notifiable crimes

The police recorded crime series is restricted to offences which are, or can be tried, at a Crown Court¹. A range of non-notifiable offences may be dealt with by the police issuing an out of court disposal or by prosecution at a magistrates’ court. These can include offences that may have been identified by other agencies – for example, prosecutions by TV Licensing or by the DVLA for vehicle registration offences.

Data on these offences provide counts of offences where action has been brought against an offender and guilt has either been ascertained in court, or the offender has admitted culpability through acceptance of a penalty notice. These offences generally only come to light through the relevant authorities actively looking to identify offending behaviour. These figures help fill a gap in the coverage of the main CSEW and recorded crime statistics.

Key findings from the available sources include:

• Cases brought to magistrates’ courts in the year ending December 2011² resulted in 1.1 million convicted non-notifiable offences, down 7 per cent from the previous year and continuing the downward trend since 2004.

• 46,000 Penalty Notices for Disorder were issued for non-notifiable offences in 2011 (Table 27), around four in five of these were for being drunk and disorderly.

Table 27 Non-notifiable crime dealt with by the courts/Penalty Notices for Disorder

England and Wales

Table source: Justice

Table notes:

1. The population figures used are the mid-2010 population estimates provided by the Office for National Statistics
2. Numbers will be affected by the size of the resident population relative to the transient or visiting populations and may therefore over-represent the number of crimes relative to the real population of potential offenders
3. Excludes convictions data for Cardiff magistrates court for April, July and August 2008
4. Penalty Notices for Disorder, both higher and lower tier offences, issued to offenders aged 16 and over
5. Piloted in 2002 and introduced nationally in 2004
6. Includes British Transport Police from 2011
7. Ministry of Justice Criminal Justice Statistics Quarterly Update to December 2011 (Tables 2.1, 6.2, 6.3)

The police and, increasingly, local authorities have powers to issue penalty notices for a range of traffic offences and in 2010, the police issued 1.8 million Fixed Penalty Notices (just over half of which related to speeding).³

Notes for Other non-notifiable crimes

1. The Notifiable Offence List includes all indictable and triable-either-way offences (that is, offences which could be tried at a Crown Court) and a few additional closely related summary offences (which would be dealt with by a magistrate). For information on the classifications used for notifiable crimes recorded by the police, see Appendix 1 of the User Guide (483.8 Kb Pdf) .

2. The latest figures available from the MoJ relate to the year ending December 2011 and thus lag the CSEW and police recorded series by three months but are included to give a fuller picture. The MoJ will release figures for the year ending March 2012 in September 2012.

3. Source: Police Powers and Procedures 2010/11 (Home Office, 2012, Table FPN.02).

Data Sources - further information

• This quarterly release presents the most recent crime statistics from two different sources: the Crime Survey for England and Wales (previously known as the British Crime Survey), and police recorded crime. It also draws on data from other sources to provide a more comprehensive picture. This series of first releases focuses on the latest figures and longer-term trends. For detailed information about the statistical sources used here, refer to the User Guide to Crime Statistics for England and Wales (483.8 Kb Pdf)  (ONS, 2012)¹.

Time periods covered

The latest Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) figures presented in this release are based on interviews conducted between April 2011 and March 2012, measuring each respondent’s experiences of crime in the 12 months before the interview. It therefore covers a mix of crimes occurring in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Nine months of the data reported on here overlap with the data contained in the last bulletin.

Recorded crime figures in this release relate to crimes recorded by the police in the financial year 2011/12; the figures presented in this release are those notified to the Home Office and that were contained in the Home Office database on 13 June 2012. As in previous years, recorded crime figures remain subject to change as forces continue to submit further data.

Coverage of crime statistics

The CSEW and recorded crime provide generally good coverage of crime committed against the public, particularly for offences involving physical harm, loss or damage to property. Together they provide a more comprehensive picture than could be obtained from either series alone. However, neither the CSEW nor police recorded crime aim to provide complete counts of crime and there are exclusions from both series.

The coverage of police recorded crime statistics is defined by the Notifiable Offence List², which includes a broad range of offences, from murder to minor criminal damage, theft and public order offences. However, there are some, mainly less serious offences that are excluded from the recorded crime collection. These ‘non-notifiable’ crimes include many incidents that might generally considered to be ‘anti-social behaviour’ but that may also be crimes in law (including bye-laws) such as littering, begging and drunkenness. Other non-notifiable offences include driving under the influence of alcohol, parking offences and TV licence evasion. These have been separately reported on in this first release.

The coverage of the main count of CSEW crime is a subset of those offences included in the police recorded crime collection, but reported volumes are higher as the survey is able to capture all offences experienced by those interviewed, not just those that have been reported to the police and recorded.

The first release also incorporates results from the 10 to 15 year old section of the CSEW. The CSEW has necessary exclusions from its main count of crime (for example, homicide, crimes against businesses and other organisations and drug possession are not covered). The survey also excludes some other offences for which it may not be possible to collect robust estimates of crime levels (such as sexual offences).

The CSEW

The British Crime Survey is now known as the Crime Survey for England and Wales to better reflect its geographical coverage. While the survey did previously cover the whole of Great Britain it ceased to include Scotland in its sample in the late 1980s. There is a separate survey – the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey – covering Scotland. Given the transfer of responsibility for the survey to ONS, it was decided that the name change would take effect from 1 April 2012.

The CSEW is a face-to-face survey in which people resident in households in England and Wales are asked about their experiences of crime in the 12 months prior to the interview. For the crime types and population groups it covers, the CSEW provides a more reliable measure of trends in crime than police recorded crime statistics, as it has a consistent methodology and is unaffected by changes in levels of reporting to the police, recording practice or police activity.

Being a household survey the CSEW does not cover crime against businesses. Following a recommendation of the National Statistician’s review of crime statistics (National Statistician, 2011), a survey of commercial victimisation is currently being planned to run later in 2012 to provide statistics on key sectors of the economy over the next three years. These results will also be incorporated into future quarterly releases in 2013.

The CSEW fieldwork was carried out by TNS-BMRB. In the year ending March 2012, the CSEW had a nationally representative sample of 46,031 adults and 3,930 children with response rates of 75 per cent and 67 per cent respectively.

The survey is weighted to adjust for possible non-response bias and to ensure the sample reflects the profile of the general population. Being based on a sample survey, CSEW estimates are subject to a margin of error. Unless stated otherwise, all changes in CSEW estimates described in the main text are statistically significant at the 95 per cent level. For more information on statistical significance and confidence intervals for CSEW data, see Section 8 of the User Guide to Crime Statistics for England and Wales (483.8 Kb Pdf) (ONS, 2012).

When interpreting results and making comparisons with police recorded crime it should be borne in mind that:

CSEW estimates cover the 12 months before each respondent’s interview, and therefore lag police recorded crime figures.

• Estimates from the CSEW are subject to a degree of variation as a result of sampling.

• Low-volume offences can frequently show apparently large year-on-year changes.

Classifying crime among 10 to 15 year olds, CSEW

Millard and Flatley (2010) proposed four potential methods for measuring crime against children. Responses to the user consultation suggested there was some value in all approaches, but the majority favoured the ‘All in law’ and ‘Norms-based’ approaches with regard to estimating levels of victimisation; these two approaches are presented within this bulletin.

Of the other two methods, there was least support during the consultation for the subjective approach which included only offences perceived to be a crime by the respondent (‘Victim perceived’) and some limited interest from users in the presentation of the ‘All in law outside school’ approach.³

The ‘All in law’ approach (now referred to as the ‘Broad measure’) is the widest-possible count of crime but will include minor offences between children and family members that would not normally be treated as criminal matters. The ‘Norms-based’ approach (now referred to as the ‘Preferred measure’) is a more focused method which takes into account factors identified as important in determining the severity of an incident but will still include incidents of a serious nature even if they took place at school.

The ‘Preferred measure’ includes all offences where:

• the offender⁴ was not known (for example, stranger, tradesman, pupil from another school); or

• the offender⁴ was known, but aged 16 or over and not a family member (for example, neighbour, older friend, teacher);⁵ or

• the offender⁴ was known and either a family member or aged under 16 (for example, parent, sibling, school-friend) and there was visible injury or theft or damage involving a ‘high value’ item^6; or

• a weapon⁷ was involved

In 2009/10 and 2010/11 detailed information about an incident was not collected if:

• the incident happened at school; and

• the offender⁸ was a pupil at the respondent’s school; and

• the offender did not use a weapon⁷; and

• the victim was not physically hurt in any way

This was to reduce respondent burden and to reflect that some incidents reported by children may be considered relatively minor. Incidents which met these criteria had a limited amount of information collected to enable classification to a high-level crime category and so it was not possible to assign specific offence codes within the appropriate high-level classification according to standard CSEW procedures.

As a result, these cases have been designated as ‘unspecified’ offences. Without an offence code it is not possible to tell which detailed crime type the offence would be classified as. For example, data on whether the stolen item was being carried by the respondent at the time of a theft were not collected, so it is not feasible to determine whether this would be a theft from the person or other theft of personal property. However, because the respondent reported that there was intent to commit an offence, these incidents are still considered offences under law.

‘Unspecified’ offences do not fall within the scope of the ‘Preferred measure’ because the detailed information above was not collected.

In 2011/12 this was changed and full information was collected about all incidents of crime with a reduction in the number of incidents asked about to balance data collection needs with respondent burden. This means that the ‘unspecified’ categories are not shown in the table and the data are not directly comparable over the three time periods.

Police recorded crime

Police recorded crime is the primary source of sub-national crime statistics and for lower-volume crimes. It covers people (for example residents of institutions and tourists) and sectors (for example commercial crime) excluded from the CSEW sample and has a wider coverage of offences - for example covering homicide, sexual offences, and ‘crimes against the state’ (for example, drug offences) not included in the main CSEW crime count.

Police recorded crime also provides good measures of well-reported crimes but does not cover any crimes that are not reported to or discovered by the police. It should be noted that recorded crime can be influenced by changes in recording practices or police activity. As well as the main police recorded crime series, there are additional collections covering knife crime and firearm offences, which are too low in volume to be measured reliably by the CSEW.

Police recorded crime figures have been subject to a data reconciliation process with individual forces but remain provisional as forces can revise figures during the financial year.

The National Statistics police recorded crime figures in this bulletin which cover the financial year 2011/12 have been subject to a fuller reconciliation and quality assurance process by the Home Office Statistics Unit in liaison with individual police forces.

Fraud

In 2006 the Government commissioned a National Fraud Review to assess the impact and scale of fraudulent activity across the UK.  This identified a need for co-ordinated recording, reporting and analysis of fraud data, and resulted in the formation of the National Fraud Authority (NFA), a National Lead Force for Fraud (City of London Police), Action Fraud and the NFIB.

In June 2011 the National Statistician’s Review of Crime Statistics identified fraud as one of the more important gaps in crime statistics, and recommended reporting additional sources to provide a more complete picture.

Fraud data from a range of sources are presented in the ‘Quarterly First Release to March 2012’ bulletin to provide a more complete picture. These include: police recorded crime, the NFIB, the CSEW plastic card fraud module, and the UK Cards Association.

Due to fraud being a deceptive crime, which is often difficult to locate and may be targeted at organisations or many individuals at once, it is difficult to measure and no one source is able to do so completely.

The changes resulting from the introduction of the Fraud Act 2006 mean that police recorded fraud and forgery figures from 2007/08 onwards are not comparable with previous years.

Responsibility for recording selected fraud offences is currently moving from police forces to Action Fraud, a national reporting centre that records incidents of fraud directly from the public and organisations. As such, police recorded fraud figures should be taken in context of the known under-reporting of fraud offences to the police and the continuing decline as recording transfers to Action fraud.

The CSEW provides a good indication of the proportion of plastic card owners that are victims of plastic card fraud each year. However, this is just one type of fraudulent crime and is not an indication of the extent of fraud in general.

NFIB data are not accredited National Statistics and are subject to ongoing development before they should be seen as providing an authoritative measure of fraud. As responsibility for recording selected fraud offences moves from the police to Action Fraud and data is sourced from additional industry sources, the volume of offences it reports will increase. It is not possible to separate the dataset in to England and Wales only as some sources of NFIB data are UK-wide.

Anti-social behaviour

Anti-social behaviour incidents reported to the police are recorded in accordance with the National Standard for Incident Recording (NSIR).

A recent report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC, 2012) raised some concerns over the recording of anti-social behaviour incidents: some incidents recorded by the police as anti-social behaviour should have instead been recorded as crimes; and there was poor identification of repeat, vulnerable and intimidated victims of anti-social behaviour at the first point of contact.

While incidents are recorded under NSIR in accordance with the same ‘victim focused’ approach that applies for recorded crime, these figures are not accredited National Statistics and are not subject to the same level of quality assurance as the main recorded crime collection. For example, the variation in the type of anti-social behaviour incident recorded into the three new strands of ‘Personal’, ‘Nuisance’ and ‘Environmental’ (from 2011/12 onwards) across police forces suggests that there are some discrepancies in how police forces are categorising incidents.

Figures should be interpreted as incidents recorded by the police. It is likely that reporting rates for these incidents will be lower than those for the majority of higher severity offences included in recorded crime. In addition, these figures provide an incomplete count of the extent of reported anti-social behaviour; incidents are also reported to other agencies, such as local authorities or social landlords (for example, problems with nuisance neighbours). Such reports will not generally be included in these police figures.

Notes for Data Sources - further information

1. This User Guide (483.8 Kb Pdf) is the standard source of information on both police recorded crime figures and the CSEW.

2. The Notifiable Offence List includes all indictable and triable-either-way offences (that is, offences which could be tried at a crown court) and a few additional closely related summary offences (which would be dealt with by a magistrate). For information on the classifications used for notifiable crimes recorded by the police, see Appendix 1 of the User Guide (483.8 Kb Pdf) .

3. Whilst only two measures are being presented, data are still collected to enable the other measures to be derived; these will be made publicly available through the Economic and Social Data Service.

4. If there was more than one offender, the incident was included if just one of the offenders matched this criteria.

5. The inclusion of offences committed by a known non-family member irrespective of the nature of the offence represents a change to the approach used for the ‘Norms-based’ measure that was previously published in 2010 (Millard and Flatley). This recognises the importance of age in addition to relationship in classifying the severity of an incident.

6. This excludes items such as pens, stationery, food, toys, cards, cigarettes.

7. A ‘weapon’ constitutes any item that was considered to be a weapon by the victim; this includes knives, sticks, stones, bottles.

8. Where there was more than one offender, detailed information was collected if any of the offenders were not pupils at the respondent’s school.

Changes to crime statistics reporting

Recent changes

On January 2011 The Home Secretary announced a review of crime statistics to be carried out by the National Statistician which resulted in the publication of the review in June 2011.

One of the eight recommendations was that responsibility for the publication of the crime statistics should move to an independent body (ONS). It was also recommended that ONS assume responsibility for the management of the British Crime Survey (since re-titled as the Crime Survey for England and Wales). The transfer of responsibilities to ONS took effect from 1 April 2012.

The Government accepted the recommendations of the National Statistician in a written Ministerial Statement.

This release represents the second such publication from ONS. To provide continuity for users of these statistics, the same information previously produced by the Home Office is provided with this release, although in a slightly different format- see below. However, changes are planned for future releases and details will be made available to users for comment in due course.

Changes to publication of first release

Following the move of the processing and publication of crime statistics to ONS from the Home Office the standard quarterly releases have been extended to include more long-term trends and other data sources, this will be the case for all quarterly releases from July onwards. This therefore removes the need for such a large annual publication as much of what has previously been published as an annual publication will be included in the new style quarterly publications. However, not everything will be covered in the detailed commentary but will be produced and presented to users as Annual trend and demographic tables (1.33 Mb Excel sheet) .

ONS will also produce an annual overview of crime statistics as a companion to the July release to add context to the data.

Future plans

ONS will continue to develop the quarterly publications and has proposals to develop a different way of presenting the crime classifications used in the standard quarterly release. These will be shared with users through a range of user engagement activities and formal consultation before any changes are made.

List of products

The following are URL links associated with the production of Crime Statistics.

1. Trends in crime: a short story

2. Pre-April 2012 publications on the Home Office website

3. Historic police recorded crime

4. Previous quarterly publication

5. User Guide to Crime Statistics for England and Wales (483.8 Kb Pdf)

6. British Crime Survey 2010/11 Technical Report

7. Crime in England and Wales 2010-11. Published 14 July 2011

8. ‘Public perceptions of policing, engagement with police and victimisation: Findings from the 2010/11 British Crime Survey’ Supplementary Volume 1 to Crime in England and Wales 2010/11, Home Office Statistical Bulletin 18/11. Published 17 November 2011

9. ‘Homicides, Firearm Offences and Intimate Violence 2010/11’ Supplementary Volume 2 to Crime in England and Wales 2010/11, Home Office Statistical Bulletin 02/12. Published 19 January 2012

10. ‘Hate crime, cyber security and the experience of crime among children: Findings from the 2010/11 British Crime Survey’ Supplementary Volume 3 to Crime in England and Wales 2010/11, Home Office Statistical Bulletin 06/12. Published 29 March 2012

11. National Statistician’s Review of Crime Statistics

12. UK Data Archive

13. In addition to these National Statistics releases, provisional management information drawn from police recorded crime figures, published at street level each month, is available: Police recorded crime, street level mapping tool

References

Chaplin, R., Flatley, J. and Smith, K. (Eds), 2011, ‘Crime in England and Wales 2010/11’, Home Office Statistical Bulletin 10/11

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, 2012, ‘The crime scene: A review of police crime and incident reports’

Home Office, 2012a, ‘Crime in England and Wales: Quarterly Update to September 2011’, Home Office Statistical Bulletin 01/12

Home Office, 2012b, ‘Hate crime, cyber security and the experience of crime among children: Findings from the 2010/11 British Crime Survey’ Supplementary Volume 3 to Crime in England and Wales 2010/11, Home Office Statistical Bulletin 06/12

National Statistician, 2011, ‘National Statistician’s Review of Crime Statistics: England and Wales’

Office for National Statistics, 2012, ‘User Guide to Crime Statistics for England and Wales’ (483.8 Kb Pdf)

Moon, D. and Flatley, J. (Eds), Parfrement-Hopkins, J., Hall, P., Hoare, J., Lau, I., and Innes, J., 2011, ‘Public perceptions of policing, engagement with police and victimisation: Findings from the 2010/11 British Crime Survey’ Supplementary Volume 1 to Crime in England and Wales 2010/11, Home Office Statistical Bulletin 18/11

Sivarajasingam, V., Wells, J.P., Moore, S., Morgan, P. and Shepherd, J.P., 2012, ‘Violence in England and Wales 2011. An accident and Emergency Perspective’ Cardiff: Cardiff University

Smith, K. and Flatley, J. (Eds), 2011, ‘Drug Misuse Declared: Findings from the 2010/11 British Crime Survey’, Home Office Statistical Bulletin 12/11

Smith, K., Osborne, S., Lau, I., Britton, A., 2012, ‘Homicides, Firearm Offences and Intimate Violence 2010/11’ Supplementary Volume 2 to Crime in England and Wales 2010/11, Home Office Statistical Bulletin 02/12

Background notes

1. National Statistics are produced to high professional standards set out in the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. They undergo regular quality assurance reviews to ensure that they meet customer needs. They are produced free from any political interference.

2. Details of policy governing the release of new data are available from Media Relations Office.

3. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook. View the latest ONS podcasts on YouTube.

4. Details of the policy governing the release of new data are available by visiting www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/assessment/code-of-practice/index.html or from the Media Relations Office email: media.relations@ons.gsi.gov.uk

   The United Kingdom Statistics Authority has designated these statistics as National Statistics, in accordance with the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 and signifying compliance with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics.

   Designation can be broadly interpreted to mean that the statistics:

   • meet identified user needs;
   • are well explained and readily accessible;
   • are produced according to sound methods; and
   • are managed impartially and objectively in the public interest.

   Once statistics have been designated as National Statistics it is a statutory requirement that the Code of Practice shall continue to be observed.

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