23
Jan
2016
By Calvin at 12:05 GMT, 10 years ago
The latest survey findings have just been released and here are the main points:
- The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) shows there were an estimated 6.6 million incidents of crime covered by the survey in the year ending September 2015. This latest estimate was not significantly different compared with the previous year’s.
- There was a 6% increase in police recorded crime compared with the previous year, with 4.3 million offences recorded in the year ending September 2015. Most of this rise is thought to be due to a greater proportion of reports of crime being recorded in the last year, following improved compliance with national recording standards by police forces.
- Improvements in recording of crime are thought to have particularly affected some categories of violent crime recorded by the police. There was a 27% rise in violence against the person offences (an additional 185,666 offences) which was largely driven by increases within the violence without injury sub-group (up by 130,207 offences; a 37% increase). The CSEW estimate for violent crime showed no significant change compared with the previous year’s survey.
- There were also increases in some of the more serious types of police recorded violence, including a 9% rise in offences involving knives or sharp instruments and a 4% increase in offences involving firearms. Such offences are less likely to be prone to changes in recording practices though there is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that a tightening of recording procedures may also be contributing to some of the increase in some forces.
- Sexual offences recorded by the police continued to rise with the latest figures up 36% on the previous year; equivalent to an additional 26,606 offences. The numbers of rapes (33,431) and other sexual offences (66,178) were at the highest level since the introduction of the National Crime Recording Standard in the year ending March 2003. 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 a 5% increase in the volume of fraud offences referred to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) at the City of London Police. Over 0.6 million offences were referred to NFIB, including 234,878 offences reported by victims to Action Fraud (the UK’s national fraud reporting centre), 283,654 referrals from Cifas (a UK-wide fraud prevention service) and 86,066 cases from FFA UK (that represents the UK payments industry). It is known that many cases of fraud do not come to the attention of the police, and these figures provide a very partial picture.
TCPW Comment
Here’s another point not included in the ‘main points’, which I think is worthy of our attention:
- The year ending September 2015 Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimated 743,000 incidents of domestic burglary. The level of domestic burglary was at a similar level to the previous year with the apparent 5% decrease not statistically significant
It seems that the ongoing fall in burglary since the mid 1990s is bottoming out and I believe this has particular significance for this website and its many readers and supporters. These days there are fewer police officers and PCSOs on the streets and there are fewer police crime prevention experts to help you, so it is vitally important that you do all you can to help yourself. Burglary is still a very real problem with an average of 1 in every 50 homes getting broken into each year. Just think about that for one moment...
If you live in ‘Average Street’ think about 12 houses either side of yours and 24 on the opposite side of the road. One of these will get broken into in 2016. Don’t let that be yours! Make 2016 the year you properly secured your home.
