Crime is Falling

There's ever more crime and disorder in our streets than there used to be, right? Wrong. According to the ONS crime fell 16% in England and Wales according to Crime Survey figures. Following a peak in the early 1990's, recorded violent and sexual crime is now back down to where it was in the early 1980's and predicted to fall further (source: ONS):

An article in the Economist in July 2013 suggested this could be because: 

"The crack cocaine and heroin epidemics of the 1980s and 1990s have largely burnt out. Electronic crime and fraud has distracted some professional criminals from traditional ways of stealing stuff. Policing has improved, and more people are locked up in prison. The two wildest ideas are the introduction of legal abortion and the phaseout of leaded petrol."

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Crime Statistics, period ending March 2013 were as follows:

• Latest figures from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimate that there were 8.6 million crimes in England and Wales, based on interviews with a representative sample of households and resident adults in the year ending March 2013. This represents a 9% decrease compared with the previous year’s survey. This latest estimate is the lowest since the survey began in 1981 and is now less than half its peak level in 1995.
• The CSEW also estimated that there were an additional 0.8 million crimes against children aged 10 to 15 resident in the household population.
• The police recorded 3.7 million offences in the year ending March 2013, a decrease of 7% compared with the previous year. This is the lowest level since 2002/03 when the last major change in police recording practice was introduced.
• Victim-based crime accounted for 83% of all police recorded crime (3.1 million offences) and fell by 9% in the year ending March 2013 compared with the previous year. The volume of offences recorded in this category is equivalent to 55 recorded offences per 1,000 population.
• Other crimes against society recorded by the police (402,615 offences) showed a decrease of 10% compared with the previous year.
• In the year ending March 2013, 229,018 fraud offences were recorded by the police. This represents a volume increase of 27% compared with the previous year and should be seen in the context of a move to centralised recording of fraud.
• Within victim-based crime there were decreases across all the main categories of recorded crime compared with the previous year, except for theft from the person (up 9%) and sexual offences (1% increase). The latter increase is thought to be partly a ‘Yewtree effect’, whereby greater numbers of victims of sexual offences have come forward to report historical offences to the police.
• There were an additional 1.0 million offences dealt with by the courts in the year ending December 2012 (the latest period for which data are available), which are not included in the police recorded crime figures. These cover less serious crimes, such as speeding offences, which are dealt with no higher than magistrates courts.