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Main points

• Latest figures from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) showed that, for the offences it covers, there were an estimated 6.5 million incidents of crime against households and resident adults (aged 16 and over). This is a 8% decrease compared with the previous year’s survey, and the lowest estimate since the CSEW began in 1981. The largest volume reduction in CSEW estimates was for the all theft offences category (which was down 8%).
• There was a 5% increase in police recorded crime compared with the previous year, with 4.3 million offences recorded in the year ending June 2015. A large part of this rise is thought to be due to improved compliance with national recording standards by police forces in the last year.
• The CSEW estimate for violent crime showed no significant change compared with the previous year’s survey. There was a rise in violence against the person offences recorded by the police (up by 25%, or an additional 163,398 offences). This was driven by increases within the violence without injury sub-group which was up by 108,701 offences (a 33% increase). Such offences are thought to be prone to changes in recording practice.
• However, there were also increases in the more serious categories of police recorded violence including a 16% rise in violence with injury (up by 54,653 offences). Possession of a knife or sharp instrument increased by 9% (to 10,154 offences) whilst other selected offences involving knives and sharp instruments increased by 4%. The latter offences are generally not as prone to changes in recording practice. This rise may represent a real change in the downward trend seen in recent years and a more proactive police response to it though it is possible that improvements in recording of violent offences is also contributing.
• Sexual offences recorded by the police continued to rise with the latest figures up 41% on the previous year; equivalent to an additional 27,602 offences. The numbers of rapes (31,621) and other sexual offences (63,861) being at the highest level since the introduction of the National Crime Recording Standard in 2002/03. As well as improvements in recording, this is also thought to reflect a greater willingness of victims to come forward to report such crimes.
• There was an increase of 9% in the volume of fraud offences referred to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) at the City of London Police. Nearly 600,000 offences were referred to NFIB, including 237,494 offences reported by victims to Action Fraud (the UK’s national fraud reporting centre), 266,701 referrals from Cifas (a UK-wide fraud prevention service) and 95,489 cases from FFA UK (that represents the UK payments industry).

Get all the tables for this publication in the data section of this publication.