Centre for Crime and Justice

The type and nature of crime is constantly evolving. One of our challenges is keeping up to date with latest trends to provide the best overview of crime from all available sources.

Measuring crime in the last year has continued to be challenging because of the on-going impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and government instructions to limit social contact. We have adapted both our data collection and the presentation of our statistics in response to the unfolding pandemic.

What have we done?

In the last year we have:

• continued to collect data through our Telephone Crime Survey for England and Wales (TCSEW)

• restarted face-to-face interviews with the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW)

• launched a consultation on our plans for the transformation of the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) to make survey data collection more resilient to unforeseen future events

• continued to explore the feasibility of online surveying as part of a multimodal approach to survey data collection

• continued to improve our statistics related to violence against women and girls, including redeveloping domestic abuse questions and developing new questions on experiences of harassment

This work has allowed us to publish our regular crime bulletins and make improvements to our statistics as the type and nature of crime evolve. In the last year we have implemented both user feedback and Office for National Statistics (ONS)-led improvements including:

• reporting on crimes in England and Wales using data from the TCSEW in our quarterly bulletins

• publishing articles on the lasting impact of violence against women and girls and how domestic abuse data are captured through the criminal justice system as part of our annual domestic abuse compendium

• publishing articles on victimization and its relationship to drug use, common mental disorders and wellbeing, child victims of modern slavery and perceptions of personal safety and harassment

• publishing research updates on the redevelopment of crime statistics, including the redevelopment of domestic abuse statistics, sourcing data on child victims of modern slavery, collating data on the impact of crime on victims and society, the feasibility of a survey measuring child abuse and upcoming work on subnational statistics

Engaging with crime and justice statistics users

It is important for us to listen and engage with our stakeholders so that we can provide crime and justice statistics that are useful and relevant. As part of this, the first annual Crime and Justice Statistics Forum took place in February 2022.

The forum provided users of crime and justice data an opportunity to hear from key data suppliers covering how they have continued to measure crime during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. In addition, we held several workshops to provide users with an opportunity to engage with experts, share insights and discuss the future of our statistics and foster future collaboration.

A collection of presentations from the day is available. Please sign up to our updates to be informed of this year's Crime and Justice Statistics forum as well as other future events.

Upcoming priorities

Over the coming year we will continue to improve our work on crime statistics. Although our plans may change as we remain responsive to emerging priorities, over the next 12 months we plan to:

• Continue redevelopment of the CSEW for future use to ensure data collection is more resilient to unforeseen future events

• increase the sample size of the CSEW, allowing for the potential of more granular estimates and greater analysis of the sub-groups possible

• Continue questionnaire development across many key topics including domestic abuse, experiences of harassment, crimes against children, and fraud and computer misuse offences

Further information can be found in our annual update document Improving Crime Statistics for England and Wales

A user consultation regarding the future transformation work on the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) was launched on 26 May 2022. This consultation covers the planned redesign of the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) as well as sections on violence against women and the 10- to 15-year-olds crime survey.

Our aim is to ensure that the Crime Survey reflects the evolving needs of policy makers, citizens, and data users. The CSEW is a vital source of evidence in the crime debate and it is critical that the survey continues to provide high quality statistics on crime in a cost-effective way.

The consultation remains open until 21 August 2022. We encourage responses from everyone interested in crime statistics, including from government, policing bodies, victim groups, voluntary and charities, civil society organisations and academia.

Latest Releases

Links to the latest releases from the Centre for Crime and Justice can be found on our Crime and Justice page.

We work collaboratively with other organisations both inside and outside of government, including the Home Office, Ministry of Justice and support services such as NSPCC.

National Statistical blog posts on crime and justice
News and insight from the Office for National Statistics

Crime outcomes in England and Wales
Outcomes assigned to offences recorded by the police and the total number of outcomes recorded, by outcome type and offence type. In previous years this was the 'Crimes detected' statistical series, before the new crime outcomes framework was introduced in April 2013.

Police powers and procedures, England and Wales
Statistics on arrests for recorded crime, stops and searches, breath tests and police action in relation to motoring offences.

National Fraud Intelligence Bureau Fraud and Cyber Crime Dashboard
Key statistics on the fraud and cybercrimes reported to Action Fraud.

Crime and Justice Statistics Database
Discover all official statistics relating to knife or sharp instrument offences and the impact of crime on individuals and society (crime harm) produced by public bodies in England and Wales in our experimental interactive database published on the Government Statistical Service (GSS) website. We hope to expand this to cover more crime types in the future.

Criminal court statistics
These reports present the latest statistics on type and volume of cases that are received and processed through the criminal court system of England and Wales. The figures give a summary overview of the volume of cases dealt with by these courts over time, with statistics also broken down for the main types of case involved.

For crime and justice statistics relating to other UK countries, please see the links below:

Scottish Law and Order Statistics

Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) Crime and Justice Statistics

• Phone: +44 20 7592 8695

• Email: crimestatistics@ons.gov.uk

• Sign up to ONS Centre for Crime and Justice statistics updates to receive our twice-yearly newsletter and notifications of our latest releases.

For more information on our latest privacy information please visit our Data Protection pages.

Further privacy information related to our main sources of crime data can be found here:

• Crime Survey Privacy Information (Kantar Public)

• Home Office Privacy Information Notice (PIN)