Recorded crime goes up as officer numbers go down

Police recorded crime in England and Wales has gone up 10% in the last year, new statistics show.

The numbers – from the Office of National Statistics – show that over the past financial year public order offences are up 39%, violent crime is up 18%, theft is up 7%, sexual offences are up 14%, robbery is up 16% and burglary is up 3%.

The rise in crime figures were published on the same day as it was revealed police officer numbers in England and Wales are at their lowest for more than 30 years.

There are now 123,142 police officers in England and Wales. That’s 20,592 fewer than there were in 2010.

National Police Chiefs’ Council Lead for Criminal Justice, Chief Constable Simon Byrne said: “The 10 per cent rise in police recorded crime causes us concern, particularly when the number of police officers is at its lowest since 1985.

“It demonstrates how crime is changing with hidden crimes are coming to the fore, old crimes are being committed in new ways and truly new crimes emerging.

“While we have worked hard in recent years to increase reporting of crime and to improve our recording practices, these do not fully explain the rises we are seeing today. There are genuine rises in a range of crimes like theft, knife crime and some types of violent crime including homicide, and high numbers of people targeted by fraud and cyber offences.

“We are committed to doing all we can to bring these crimes down and forces are finding new ways to tackle knife crime, make theft harder, fight cybercrime and intervene early to prevent people turning to violence.

“Fighting crime is core to what we do, but we need government support to stabilise our funding and to encourage key partners to do all they can to help us prevent crime.”

National Police Chiefs’ Council Lead for Workforce, Chief Constable Giles York said: “These figures demonstrate the difficult decisions forces are having to take with constrained budgets. While we are seeing a further reduction in our workforce of around one per cent, it is a smaller decrease than the year before.”

Steve White, Chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, said: “The Government need to start to invest now in backing the police service so that it can carry out its primary responsibility, which is the safety and security of citizens. These figures demonstrate that this has not happened.”