Crime experienced by individuals and households has generally decreased over the last 10 years with some notable exceptions.
Latest estimates from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) showed that there were an “estimated 9.2 million incidents of headline crime” (which includes theft, robbery, criminal damage, fraud, computer misuse and other abusive activities) in the survey year ending (YE) June 2024.
This was said to be 18% lower compared with the YE March 2017 survey (the earliest comparable year for CSEW headline crime, including fraud and computer misuse).
Their latest CSEW estimates showed a “10% increase in the number of headline crime incidents’ when compared with last year’s survey (YE June 2023).
This increase might be partly because (or at least attributed to) the previous survey reporting period (July 2021 to May 2023) still “including times of COVID-19 restrictions.”
But it is considered to be “too early to tell” if this change represents “a short-term fluctuation or the start of a new trend.”
Although most crime types did not show a “statistically significant” change, there were notable increases in robbery, consumer and retail fraud (along with various other illegal activities).
In the year ending June 2024:
- robbery returned to levels last seen before the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, rising to an estimated 139,000 incidents, compared with 60,000 incidents in YE June 2023; although police recorded crime is preferred source for robbery
- consumer and retail fraud increased by 19%, reaching approximately 963,000 incidents
The latest Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) is said to be an interviewer-administered face-to-face victimization survey.
People (aged 16 years and over) resident in households in England and Wales are asked about their “experiences of crime in the 12 months before the interview.”
For the population and “offence types” it covers, the CSEW generally provides the better measure of “trends over time, because it is unaffected by changes in levels of reporting to the police or police recording practices.”
CSEW estimates were temporarily “suspended” of their accredited official statistics status between July 2022 and September 2024 because of the potential impact of “lower response rates on data quality after the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.”
Following the results of our CSEW data quality review in June 2024, the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) independently reviewed their request for “reaccreditation and CSEW estimates regained accredited official statistics status in October 2024.”
The CSEW captures a broad range of victim-based crimes experienced by those “interviewed, not just those that have been reported to, and recorded by, the police.”
The interview-administered questions give “headline estimates” of CSEW crime and include theft, robbery, criminal damage, fraud, computer misuse, and other unlawful activities.
They are reported as both “incidents (the estimated number of crimes) and prevalence (the estimated proportion of the population that were victims).”