Crime statistics explained - is it rising or falling?

Crime has been a key issue in the general election campaign, with parties competing to claim that it is their policies which will keep people safe, reduce the level of offending and provide the necessary support to the police and wider criminal justice system. 

Some of the claims we’ve seen are apparently contradictory—the Conservatives, for example, have repeatedly argued crime has fallen sharply, while Reform UK has said it is at “record” levels. 

This is at least in part because there are different ways of measuring crime which can paint very different pictures. In addition, some individual crime types may be falling while others are rising, making it difficult to get a clear, overall picture of the situation and allowing politicians to cherry pick which data to use.

The Labour party has previously sought to paint the Conservatives as having failed on crime. Similarly, the Conservatives have sought to portray London—which has a Labour mayor in charge of police—as the part of England and Wales driving an overall rise in knife crime.  

An additional complication is that public perceptions of crime are often at odds with what we know from crime data. An April 2024 survey by the think tank More in Common found 69% of people believe levels of crime are rising, even though the best data we have on the overall trend suggests most crime types have actually fallen over the past 30 years. 

Levels of crime can also be impacted by external factors that have nothing to do with a government’s crime or policing policy. For example, during the first lockdown in 2020, the number of police recorded crimes involving theft and robbery fell by 43% and 47% respectively, as there were fewer people out on the streets. However, it’s been suggested that police used the lull in demand to focus on tackling drug gangs, meaning recorded drug offences during the same period actually rose by a third. 

This explainer is one of a series Full Fact is publishing ahead of the 4 July general election, exploring a range of topics which feature in the campaign. We’ll be updating these articles on a regular basis—this article was last updated on 26 June 2024 and the information in it is correct as of then. 

How is crime measured?

There are two main measures of crime in England and Wales—police recorded crime statistics and crime survey data—both of which are published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).  (The criminal justice system is devolved in Scotland and Northern Ireland, so their figures are separate—we’ve focused here on the figures for England and Wales.) 

Firstly, all offences that are reported to the 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales and the British Transport Police are collated and published as police recorded crime statistics. 

One problem with relying on these figures is that not all crimes are reported to the police. Even for the crimes that are, different forces have different methodologies, meaning it isn’t always possible to compare one part of the country with another. Technical issues mean that neither Greater Manchester Police nor Devon and Cornwall Police have had any of their knife offences included in the statistics in recent years. 

Police recorded crime can also be influenced by changes in recording practices, levels of accuracy (around one in ten crimes are not recorded by some forces), the introduction of new offences and policy changes that impact particular types of offending (such as the targeting of drug dealers during lockdown mentioned above).

The second measure is the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), which estimates the level of offending by conducting face-to-face interviews with a sample of around 35,000 adults and extrapolating the results across the entire population. 

Researchers conducting the CSEW ask people if they have been a victim of a crime. The results are recorded regardless of whether that crime was reported to the police. 

The Office for Statistics Regulation says: “The CSEW is the best source for understanding long-term trends in crime covered by the survey. This is because the survey methods have changed little in the last 40 years and the survey is not affected by changes to police crime recording practices or people’s willingness to report crime to the police.” 

The CSEW does have some limitations, however.

It relies on those being questioned remembering whether they were a victim of a crime in the past 12 months.  As it is a household survey, it does not take into account crimes against businesses or organisations, such as shoplifting. There have also been concerns about the data quality and response rate of the survey which led in 2022 to the temporary suspension of its National Statistics accreditation.

For some offences, the crime survey may not be the best source of data. Murders and serious assaults that lead to hospitalisation are less common but almost always come to the attention of the police, so recorded crime figures are usually preferred for these offences. 

In addition, the CSEW does not ask questions about people’s experience of crimes such as stalking or harassment. Although it also collects information about some sexual offences, these are captured separately and not included in the main count. 

Has overall crime fallen since 2010?

A common claim we have seen from the Conservatives is that, since they have been in office, ”overall crime” has fallen by around 50%.

This figure is based on specific data from the CSEW which doesn’t count fraud or computer misuse offences, so doesn’t represent all crime. In the year up to December 2023 the CSEW estimated that fraud and computer misuse accounted for around half of all offences. 

Questions about fraud were not included in the CSEW until 2017 so it is not possible to make a direct comparison between figures from before and after that change. (Fraud, especially online fraud, was either rare or simply did not exist when the CSEW began 40 years ago.)

The total number of offences including fraud and computer misuse has dropped by about 20% since 2017.

In February 2022, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson was rebuked by the then-head of the UK Statistics Authority for claiming that crime had fallen by 14% over a two-year period. 

Sir David Norgrove said: “If fraud and computer misuse are counted in total crime as they should be, total crime in fact increased by 14% between the year ending September 2019 and the year ending September 2021.”

He added that the “sharp rise in fraud and computer misuse” had more than offset falls in other kinds of crime over that period.

What about claims crime is at ‘record’ levels?

The Reform UK election ‘contract’, meanwhile, stated there is “record crime”, and we’ve other similar claims in recent years, for instance in the media in 2022.  

Crimes recorded by the police have increased sharply in recent years. In the 12 months to December 2023, a total of 6.7 million crimes were recorded by the police, the highest number on record. 

But as outlined above, the ONS says police recorded crime isn’t the best data to understand overall trends, and the CSEW is a better indicator of long-term trends. It shows there have been long-term declines in overall crime, since the mid 1990s. 

While the Conservative government has sought to take credit for falls in key crimes such as violence and burglary, there is uncertainty over how much this can be attributed to government policy, as the fall in crime is not unique to the UK—it can be seen in virtually all high-income countries around the world, and is referred to by academics as the “crime drop”. 

Although there is no accepted consensus for the reasons behind this, factors such as greater use of surveillance, a move away from a cash-based society and improved household and vehicle security may have simply made it more difficult to commit some forms of crime in the first place. 

What about violent crime?

As well as a long-term decline in overall crime, the CSEW suggests there’s been a general decline in violent crime too.

According to a report by the House of Commons Library, this can be seen in the number of homicides that occur each year. In England and Wales, these rose to around 500 per year during the 1970s and peaked at more than 1,000 per year in 2003, but have since fallen to around 600 per year.

The Labour party manifesto claims that knife crime has been rising for the past decade. Although the most recent police recorded crime data supports this, the ONS urges caution when making comparisons over time due to changes in the way data on such crimes has been captured. 

The ONS says: “Increases in these offences since 2015 will be partly because of a genuine increase in these offences and partly because of improvements in recording.”

We wrote more about the way knife crime is measured earlier this year.