THE UK CRIME RATE

The UK Crime Rate



The UK Crime Rate

British Crime Rate

Overall crime rates held steady in UK and Wales over the past year. This is part of a long-term trend - crime rates peaked in 2000, and then fell by 42% over the subsequent 9 years. The decline reduced the risk of the average person becoming a victim of crime by 41%, although that risk increased by one percentage point last year. Police recorded crime rates showed violent crime rates fell by 1% over the last year - the first fall in that category in eight years. The number of police recorded crimes involving firearms declined by 13% during the same time period. Some crime categories did show increases, but vandalism was the only category to show a statistically significant change over the year - vandalism reports increased by 10%. However, even with that increase, reports of vandalism are still 11% lower now than they were in 2000.

Crime in UK is a document that combines both Recorded Crime Statistics (crime recorded by the police) and the British Crime Survey (crime as experienced by people - gathered from surveys) into a single document that will make comparisons between the two easier, and give a more complete picture of crime.

Mean

20

19

Median

17

16

Mode

20

7 and 10

 

 

 

Standard Deviation

14.42757623

13.88563883

Variance

208.154956

192.8109656

(Source: Metropolitan Police Service - Population details obtained from the London Analyst Support Site)

The information used in this analysis comes form the Metropolitan Police Service's recorded crime statistics. The data covers all 'Notifiable offences', which relate to the type of offences recorded by the police, the totals of which are notified to the Home Office.

The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 saw the introduction of 376 Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRP's) throughout England and Wales (32 in London), to tackle crime within local authority boundaries. The Home Office has grouped together similar characteristics (termed CDRP Families) to enable CDRP's to compare their performance in tackling crime.

In order to compare crime rates accurately, the raw numbers of offences committed are calculated as a rate per 1, 000 population.

Figure 1 demonstrates how UK's crime rate compared to the Metropolitan Police Service area average between 2001/02 and 2005/06.

Figure 1 Total Notifiable offences per 1, 000 population for UK and the London average (Source: Metropolitan Police Service - Population details obtained from the London Analyst Support Site).

Figure 1 shows that:

During 2005/2006, UK's 37,295 recorded offences equate to 123.93 offences per 1, 000 population.

Between 2001/02 and 2005/06 there has been a decrease in total Notifiable offences per 1,000 population of 4.68% within UK.

Breakdown of recorded Notifiable offences in broad bands within UK, 2005-2006

Figure 2 provides a breakdown of different crime categories and their proportion of total Notifiable offences during 2005-2006 within UK.

Figure 2 Breakdown of crime in UK, 2005-2006 (Source: Metropolitan Police Service © Crown Copyright).

Within these broad bands, Violence Against the Person (21%) and Theft and Handling (19%) were the two largest categories of Notifiable offences in UK in 2005/06.

In comparison, Other Notifiable Offences and Sexual Offences were the smallest categories ...