Crime Statistics: Focus on Violent Crime and Sexual Offences 2015/16

Product Description

This overview covers statistics on violent and sexual offences recorded by the police in the year ending March 2016 and violent crimes estimated by the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) in the same year.

Main points

• The estimated annual number of CSEW violent crime incidents has fallen from its 1995 peak of 3.8 million to 1.3 million. However, there was no statistically significant change compared with the previous year’s survey.
• Improvements in crime recording processes by the police are thought to be the main driver of a 27% rise in the number of violence against the person offences recorded by the police in the year ending March 2016 compared with the previous year.
• The 106,098 sexual offences recorded by the police was the highest figure recorded since the introduction of the National Crime Recording Standard in 2002. As well as improvements in recording practices, this is thought to reflect a greater willingness of victims to come forward to report such crimes, including non-recent victims.
• Violence without injury accounted for around half (55%) of all CSEW violent incidents, while the more serious crimes of wounding and assault with minor injury accounted for 24% and 21% respectively.
• Victimisation rates have declined over time, with 1.8% of adults aged 16 and over being a victim of violent crime in the 12 months prior to interview, compared with 4.8% of adults when CSEW violent crime was at its peak in 1995.
• Around half of CSEW violent incidents (52%) were reported to the police. This was higher than the proportion of all CSEW incidents reported to the police (42%), and represents a 10 percentage point increase since the year ending March 2012 survey.