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The 2022 Crime Survey for England and Wales, released by the Office for National Statistics at the end of April 2023, shows an apparent decrease in crime when compared with figures derived before the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Here are some of the key takeaways.
How Crime Levels are Measured
In order to understand the latest crime survey metrics its important to be aware of how crime levels are determined and measured. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) uses two primary measures of crime rates in England and Wales: police-recorded crime statistics and the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW).
Police recorded crime statistics, which are at a record high, are collated and published by the ONS. The ONS has noted how various factors including more victims reporting crime, improvements in police recording processes, expansion of recorded crimes to include new offences and variations in police activity have all made significant contributions to the growth in police-recorded crime. Genuine increases in some types of crime is also an important factor.
The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) conducts interviews with 13,500 people and extrapolates the results across the entire population to estimate crime levels. These interviews record interviewee crime reports regardless of whether they were reported to the police.
The ONS states that the CSEW figures are a better indicator of long-term crime trends than police-recorded crime figures because this data is unaffected by changes in police crime-recording practices or the levels of crime reports they receive.
Crime Levels Since 2010
The most recent CSEW figures show how the number of crimes, excluding fraud and computer misuse, has fallen significantly since 2010. In the year to December 2022 the survey has estimated 4.6 million offences occurred. This equates to a fall of around 50% which is the figure cited by the UK government on multiple occasions. But its important to recognise how this estimate excludes an additional 3.7 million offences of fraud and 764,000 incidents of computer misuse in that year. Including these fraud figures in the overall crime survey results significantly raises the total number of offences to around 9 million.
Why Does the CSEW Separate Fraud Offences?
The exclusion of fraud and computer misuse offences from the CSEW survey results demonstrates why its important to understand how these statistics are estimated and compiled.
The CSEW was established in 2012, after Scotland launched their own system. When launched, fraud was not considered a significant threat and therefore wasn’t included in the survey questions. In 2015 trial questions, regarding fraud and computer misuse, were included for the first time. But it wasn’t until 2017 that enough data had been accumulated to enable meaningful results to be published.
The ONS made it clear that new combined crime figures, that include fraud and computer misuse, were not directly comparable with data from previous years when these metrics were not available or included. This is the reason fraud and computer misuse offences are purposely omitted from the current CSEW figures and why the crime level comparison with 2010 looks favourable.
In May 2023 the UK government acknowledged that “Fraud now accounts for over 40% of crime”. Its clear that various forms of criminal fraud and computer misuse have significantly escalated, especially since the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Firearms Offences
The latest CSEW figures state that 6,193 firearms offences were recorded by police in 2022. This represents an increase of 11% on the 5,581 crimes recorded for 2021 but a 5% decrease compared with the pre-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic year ending March 2020 (6,511 offences).
The increase in police recorded gun crime is reported by the ONS to be largely due to the growing use of imitation firearms. The ONS says that imitation guns are “now the most prevalent principal weapon” in this type of offence, having escalated by 22% from 1800 in 2021 to 2196 in 2022.
Knife Enabled Crime
Levels of knife enabled crime are indicated to have escalated by 6% year-on-year from 46,334 offences in the year ending December 2021 to 49,265 offences in 2022. But knife-enabled crime recorded by the police remained 9% lower than pre-coronavirus pandemic levels.
Latest figures also reveal an increase in reports to the police of threats to kill involving knives during 2022.
Sexual Offences
Sexual offences recorded by the police in 2022 were up by 7% to 189,731 compared with 177,646 in the previous year. When compared with pre-pandemic levels these latest statistics show a notable increase of 19% from 159,080 offences in the pre-pandemic year of 2019/20.
Police-recorded rape offences were 67,169 in 2022, up 3% from 64,900 in 2021 and up 17% from 57,586 in the pre-pandemic year to March 2020.
As previously noted, these figures reflect increased reporting from crime victims along with improvements in police crime recording practices and they don’t reliably indicate genuine escalation in these offences.
Theft Offences
The CSEW estimates 2.6 million incidents of theft for the year ending December 2022 which represents a 20% decline from the pre-coronavirus year ending March 2020 when 3.3 million offences were estimated. CSEW data reflects long term reduction in theft offences since 1995.
But certain forms of theft are apparently growing. Tool theft, for example, is at an all time high with a high proportion of tradespeople suffering losses.
Fraud
Police recorded fraud offences are indicated to have increased by 25% to 1.1 million offences in the year ending December 2022 compared with the year ending December 2021 (912,203 offences). But its important to be aware of how these offences are captured by various reporting bodies along with related administrative changes.
For example, Action Fraud (the public-facing national fraud and cybercrime reporting centre) reported a 24% decrease in fraud offences (to 298,792 offences) compared with the year ending December 2021 (392,434 offences). A large contributor to this apparent decline has been a 22% fall in consumer and retail fraud which is likely to be related to post-pandemic customer behaviour changes.
Contrastingly there has been a significant increase in fraud offences recorded by UK Finance (responsible for coordinating activities on fraud prevention in the UK payments industry) who have reported a year-on-year increase of 146% to 467,371 offences. This was due to more reports from existing members along with reports from new members joining the organisation at the end of 2021.
Anti Social Behaviour
Police recorded incidents of anti social behaviour for 2022 are notably lower than 2021 and pre-pandemic 2020 figures. In 2022 the police recorded 1 million anti social behaviour incidents which is 29% lower than 1.4 million incidents recorded in 2021 and 23% lower than 1.3 million incidents in 2020.
Crime Trends for 2023
With the cost of living continuing to escalate its anticipated this is likely to have a growing impact on crime throughout 2023. Burglary rates typically increase in times of financial hardship and this appears to be apparent in figures for 2022 which reflect an average of 526 burglaries per day.
Tool theft is indicated to have grown to an all time high. Figures show how a massive 78% of tradespeople have had tools stolen and only 1% fully recovered what they had lost. Tool security is therefore vitally important in 2023.
Vehicle theft is another crime that primarily affects tradespeople as their vans are favoured targets for criminals. Since the average tradesperson’s vehicle stores around £2500 worth of tools and equipment security is essential.
And increased financial vulnerability due to the cost of living crisis is making people susceptible to the ever-growing range of scams. From fraudulent disaster relief charity funds to identity theft, romance scams, pension scams and fake road traffic collisions, we all need to be highly aware of fraud.
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