200 year Peelian Principles state the prevalence of crime is the number one measure of police effectiveness. The Home Office recently published quarterly police crime statistics on 30 January. On the same day, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) published their own crime survey, highlighting the issues to businesses. The results are eye-opening to say the least.
Media reporting has been fairly predictable. In the old adage of “lies, damned lies, statistics”, the combination of locations and crime types provides endless options to support pre-conceived narratives. Most people don’t assess the crime statistics themselves, partly because they’re not in a simple, accessible browsing format.
So in this blog, I do the leg work for you, answering common questions about the big picture of crime from a more objective standpoint. I also connect the issues to your police promotion ambitions…
- What’s really going on for the big picture of crime in the UK?
- How do trends compare between England and Wales to Scotland and PSNI?
- What about big forces like the Met and West Midlands?
- Is the mix of crime types changing?
- What about knife crime, sex offences and shoplifting?
- How does each force compare against 10 or even 20 years ago?
Why is Understanding Crime Important?
“1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment… 9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.” – First and last Peelian Principles
200 year long standing Peelian Principles underpin UK policing. Yes, responding quickly when called and ensuring high investigation standards are important for public confidence in justice when crime does occur. But it’s still the case that people would much rather live and work in a safe environment in the first place. In this sense, crime is the number one measure of policing.
Understanding policing’s main measure of performance is therefore central to your leadership and effective performance management. Do you know why crime has changed, based on solid intelligence and evidence-based comparisons? Or do you tend to succumb to commonplace human biases, such as taking credit when crime reduces, then blaming external factors as an explanation for increases?
While it’s a common bias, this doesn’t mean such ‘smoke and mirrors’ is healthy practice. Crime going up? “It’s a cost of living crisis, so otherwise law abiding people commit more crime”, or “we’ve improved public confidence / convenience to report more crime that was happening anyway.” Crime going down? “This is clearly the fruits of our labour and XYZ operations, we’ll keep up the good work.” Usually, such statements are no more than speculation, but because they sound plausible, it’s good enough to confirm our biases.
Thinking about promotion, you’ll need to study the CVF, which I cover extensively in my structured masterclass and detailed toolkits, along with example evidence. Here’s some examples of how this relates:
- To gain confidence and improved public service, leaders must be seen to take ownership for performance, assuring people you know (beyond speculation) why there’s a change and what’s going on, and then what you’re doing about it.
- If you’ve taken the time to develop your emotional awareness skills, you’ll become more cognisant of your inherent biases. This will no doubt inform better decision making. Then you can evidence the better decisions you’ve made (or will make) with stronger-scoring responses to your promotion board.
- While decision making, you’ll be analysing critically. For those aspiring to the more strategic ranks of Inspector and above, you’ll also need to become more competent in numerical reasoning and ‘data literacy’ (understanding stats and graphs). These free ‘stats corner’ blogs should help you on your way!
When aspiring to police leadership positions, it’s also important to stay abreast of national reports. This ‘environmental scanning’ is important CPD, especially again for the Inspector and Chief Inspector ranks, and is why Rank Success summarises so much content for you in blogs and podcasts.
On crime reduction, if you really are stuck for ideas on the problems to solve in particular neighbourhoods, consider the College of Policing’s evidence-based Crime Reduction Toolkits. There’s also plenty to learn from other forces, for example how Norfolk Police are bucking the national trends on shoplifting with meaningful action.
So let’s now get to the actual crime statistics and trends across the country…
England and Wales Recorded Crime Trends
The main measure police forces use for crime prevalence are police recorded crimes, which is the focus of this blog. If interested, the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) provides an alternative indication of crime, based on the assumption that not all crime gets reported to the police, however it only does so at the national level.
*Crime data is published to September 2024, halfway through the 2024/25 full year, so estimates are based on simply doubling this to show how the full year is likely to turn out. Doubling the half year rate provides a reasonable estimate based on prior years and most crime types. If you want the actual number of crimes, just half it again.
Across England and Wales, overall crime has fluctuated over recent decades. The Home Office crime statistics allow annual comparisons back to 2002/03. Recorded crime reduced steadily until 2012/13, flatlined for a few years, then picked up again from 2015/16. Could the changes in police officer strength I’ve previously reported have something to do with this?
Note that I’ve excluded Fraud offences as national bodies typically report. As it happens, Fraud crimes have more than doubled in the past decade, from 0.6m to 1.3m. Though this is predominantly now dealt with by Action Fraud and not forces themselves, this will no doubt be felt by your policing communities, as technology enables more of this and it is simply changing the dynamics of how offenders choose to steal from them.
For the last five or so years, total crime has been fairly steady, despite a dip in the Covid lockdown year of 2020/21. Is this a common theme between forces and signifying general societal trends, or is location a key factor?
Crime Trends Vary by Location
Police forces use recorded crime as their main measure of what needs attending to in their area. Over the past five years of relative stability across England and Wales, the above chart shows force vary wildly, from significant reductions to large increases. My local force Devon and Cornwall Police, where I was lucky enough to serve my own policing career, tops the lot with 26% more crime. This recent surge has caused D&C to slip from being consistently among the top three safest forces to its new position of 10th safest.
The 2019/20 year was not a particularly exceptional year to pick as a (pre-Covid) base either. The variations to now are consistent wherever you begin around that time.
For a longer-term view and using more of the Home Office published historical data, here’s how things have changed in 20 years, giving the far longer-term view of total recorded crime changes (excluding fraud). This time, it’s kept to the latest full available year 2023/24….
Now let’s explore the two biggest forces, the Metropolitan Police and West Midlands. The Met has followed the national trends, with crime now reaching a 20 year high and recent increases coming particularly from Sexual Offences, Theft, and Violence. For WMP, 2021-2023 saw their highest recorded crime volumes in recent history. Public Order, Sexual Offences and Violence have been their drivers.
So what of my local force in Devon and Cornwall? Following the national trend of long term reductions between 2006-2016, crime picked up for a few years and stayed at that level. But the last year has seen a massive spike, with 20% more crime in the latest published stats (to September 2024) with the full year forecasted to spike to a 20 year high.
While Criminal Damage and Arson, some types of Theft, Vehicle Crime, and Non-Residential Burglary is reducing, the main increases are coming from Sexual Offences, Violence, Theft overall (particularly Shoplifting and Domestic Burglary), Possession of Weapons, Public Order, and Miscellaneous crimes.
The force gives their reasoning for increased violent crime as follows: “Improved crime recording is likely to be contributing to some of the increase in violent crime as well as genuine increases”. For the recent surge in crime generally, they suggest this relates to their “improvements in crime recording compliance and with the 101 service”. They also propose “the increase in theft offences is believed to be linked to the cost-of-living crisis”, and that people simply have more confidence reporting crimes that were there all along.
The Changing Face of Crime
The crime mix has changed drastically since 20 years ago too. The above pie charts give a snapshot comparing the spread in 2004/05 to that expected for 2024/25 (based on that reported so far; 2023/24 was similar to this anyway).Theft used to be half of all crime, now it’s a third (though much has moved to fraud offences). Criminal damage and arson offences have drastically declined too, with violence and other offences taking their place.
Below I’ve tracked for you how each of these broad crime categories have changed every year too. First, let’s start with the concerning explosion in Rape and Other Sexual Offences. Both have increased by 3x (300%) in just the last 12 years, with 2024/25 already on track to being a new record high.
Coming back to understanding why things are changing: Is this simply increased reporting from increased trust that the police will take it seriously? Increased prevalence? How does your force look? How does this relate to the widely reported declining offender conviction outcomes for such offences? What do victims say? More importantly for your contribution to improving things for the future: What will you do as a newly promoted leader to improve the situation?
Here’s some insights as to where the main changes have been in the past five years. While no force has seen reductions, some have had larger spikes than others, often exceeding 40%. What are your views on this, particularly in the context of the focus on VAWG?
For violent crimes, Homicide has remained stable at around 600 crimes per year, after a period of decline from the start of the century. And that’s among an increasing population, so certainly to be celebrated. Other violence however has shot up in the last decade.
Most violence volume and increase has come from the sub-types of ‘violence without injury’ and ‘stalking and harassment’. The latter is particularly noteworthy, given alongside sexual offences and domestic abuse are the main focus of Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG). As a police leader, are you in tune with your force VAWG strategy or have you contributed to tackling this?
Criminal damage, arson and other crime categories have seen massive reductions over the decades, particularly criminal damage.
Knife crime remains high after increasing between 2016/17 and 2019/20, with 2024/25 projected to be the highest on record, largely driven by the Met Police. Firearms offences declined for a few years after 2009/10 and seem to have remained relatively stables since.
Theft Down, Shoplifting Up
Next, let’s explore theft related offences in England and Wales. Shoplifting has clearly boomed in just two years, after a decade-long gradual increasing trend. Retailers themselves cite both the lack of prioritisation from policing and then the lack of consequences for offenders when caught as the main reason this has become an increasingly appealing crime method for theft offenders.
It is true that policing has previously deprioritised shoplifting as it battles with competing demands and limited resources, and the ‘gentle justice’ approach to offenders is often widely criticised. This crime type hasn’t even been included in the national definition of neighbourhood crime. Organised crime and prolific offenders have been quick to target retailers in this void of police and CJS action.
This shoplifting theft increase contrasts the long-term declines in other theft-related crimes. There’s also wide variations in theft types and differences between forces in shoplifting trends. Some forces have small reductions vs. five years ago, putting this down to good work tackling crime. Others have big increases, (as per chart below), theorising that for their populations, ‘the cost of living crisis is causing more people to steal’.
So what’s really going on?
The recent national Retail Action Plan may go some way to helping reverse this trend and indicates a renewal in policing interest in this debilitating crime for businesses. If you’re an aspiring Sector Inspector or Neighbourhood Sergeant, it’s something you might want to read. If you’re aspiring to Chief Inspector or above, then managing your available resources is one of the ‘pushes and pulls’ I describe.
“Retail Crime is Out of Control”
The BRC published their own latest retail crime survey, released along with the national crime stats on the 30 January. The findings show they are really feeling this as a true increase in crime, and that it’s not being driven by those with higher costs of living trying to feed themselves.
“Retail crime is out of control. Our latest Annual Crime Survey, shows violence & abuse, and theft, spiralling upwards, yet again.” – British Retail Consortium
Here’s some key highlights summarising the state of the nation when it comes to the public confidence from and perspective of retailers in the last year…
- 20% increase in customer thefts to 20 million, costing £2 billion in losses
- Crime prevention costs to industry of £1.8 billion, up over 50%
- 737,000 incidents of violence or abuse towards staff
- Police attended 10% of violence/abuse incidents; 2% had a conviction
- 180% increase in incidents involving a weapon to 25,000
- 3 in 5 retailers rate police response to crime as poor or very poor
- 1/3 of violence and even less of theft gets reported to the police
- Overwhelming reason for underreporting is belief nothing will come of anything
These results and figures can’t be ignored, with retailers reportedly increasingly using private security alternatives to engaging with policing. Consider the following promotion board presentation scenario, towards painting a brighter future under your influence.
“As a leader, how would you restore trust and confidence in policing?”
It works equally well through the prism of retail crime, engaging diverse communities, or even acting on improving police integrity.
Police Scotland Crime Down, Sex Offences Up
While the focus is on England and Wales crime stats, let’s not forget other regions of the UK. The below chart tracks overall recorded crime in Police Scotland by year, broken into crime types. As you’ll notice, the Scottish government statistics for crime go back almost 30 years. Note that the latest data is for the full year 2023/24.
Total crime in Scotland hovered around nearly 500,000 annual crimes until 2006/07. Thereafter, it took just under a decade to reduce to its current volume of 300,000.
Breaking this down into broad types, theft has been on a 25 year continuous reduction. It dipped under 100,000 crimes during the Covid lockdown years of 2020/21 to 2021/22. Then it’s begun to pick up slightly for 2023/24 back to pre-Covid levels.
As part of theft related crime, Shoplifting has also spiked north of the border, as it has in many forces of England and Wales. While this remained stable at an average of around 30,000 annually since 1998/99, crimes for 2023/24 have shot up by a quarter.
Also akin to elsewhere in the UK, rape and sexual related offences have bucked the general long term decline in recorded crime. There was an average of just 6,500 crimes until the rise began in 2011/12 to peak at more than double at 15,000 crimes by 2021/22. That for the last two years has remained high at around 14,500.
For violent crime, except for a surge between 2004/05 to 2011/12 to around 80,000 to 90,000 offences, this has remained steady at just under 70,000 offences per year.
Northern Ireland Crime Steady, Violence and Sex Offences Up
To complete the full UK picture you won’t find elsewhere, I’ve also summarised the long term crime stats published by PSNI
Except for a surge in total crime lasting from 2001/02 to 2006/07, crime in Northern Ireland has remained relatively steady at around 100,000 offences per year. On a per-capita basis, PSNI point out in their latest crime report update that:
“Northern Ireland has the lowest crime rate when compared with all other police forces in England and Wales.”
While theft overall has been reducing akin to elsewhere, Shoplifting crimes are again something to keep an eye on. For 2023/24 these spiked to 9,000 offences, up by nearly half from their long-term pre-Covid norm of just over 6,000 per year.
Violence has seen a long-term increasing trend. It remained steady at around 30,000 offences per year until 2012/13. Since then it has crept up to its 2021/22 and 2022/23 peak of nearly 50,000. This has since fallen back slightly for last year but remains high.
Sexual offences (like elsewhere) have also severely increased over the most recent decade, now over double their 2012/13 levels at over 4,000 offences per year.
I hope you’ve found this ‘stats corner’ blog a useful insight into crimes across UK police forces and helpful to familiarise you with numerical information. It also gives you food for thought on your leadership contribution to the crime issues raised. Get in touch with or let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
Kind Regards, Steve
Seeking police promotion? Want a MASSIVE head start right now? Hit the ground running with your personal digital promotion toolkit, and/or my market-leading Police Promotion Masterclass. There’s nothing else like it to effectively prepare you for success in your leadership aspirations. You can also contact me to arrange more personal coaching support. Or try my podcast for your ongoing police leadership CPD covering a range of fascinating subjects.