Police Recorded Crime Statistics (WJEC Eduqas GCSE Sociology): Revision Note

Official statistics on crime

• Official statistics of crime recorded by police forces in England and Wales are reported to the Home Office and published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). They include:

  • Police-recorded crime – offences reported to and logged by the police

  • Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) – a large-scale victimisation survey of around 47,000 randomly selected households

    • Captures crimes that may not be reported to the police

    • Participants aged 16 and over are asked about their experiences of different crimes in the 12 months prior to the interview

Crime patterns & trends

• Official Criminal Statistics (OCS) are used to show trends and patterns in crime

• They tell us about the:

  • volume of crime (how much there is and whether it is going up or down)

  • main types of crime being committed

  • social characteristics of people who are reported, arrested, or convicted

Volume of crime

• The CSEW headline estimate of crime rose by 7% in the year ending March 2025, compared to March 2024 — from 8.8 million to 9.4 million incidents

  • This increase was mainly due to fraud (+31%), while computer misuse fell by 32% (ONS, 2025)

• Police-recorded offences stayed almost the same: 6.6 million in March 2025 vs 6.7 million the year before (ONS, 2025)

Main types of crime

• Crimes against people, e.g., violence, robbery, and sexual offences

  • Knife crime: police records show a slight fall in 2025, after increases in the late 2010s (ONS, 2025)

• Crimes against property, e.g., theft, burglary, criminal damage

  • Property crime is much lower than in the mid-1990s: about 608,000 incidents in 2025 compared with 3.4 million in 1995 (ONS, 1995; 2025)

'Typical' social characteristics

• This means the characteristics that are most often seen among people recorded in official statistics

• It is important to remember these are patterns, not descriptions of every individual who commits a crime

  • Gender: In 2023/24, 84% of arrests were male and 16% female (ONS)

    • Men were around six times more likely to be arrested than women in 2022/23

  • Ethnicity: In 2022/23, Black people were 2.2 times more likely to be arrested than White people (20.4 vs 9.4 per 1,000)

    • Rates for Black men were 38.2 per 1,000 vs 16.0 for White men (ONS)

  • Age: Young adults are heavily represented in serious violence cases

  • Class and area: OCS suggest many offenders come from working-class backgrounds and urban areas

• Differences in arrest and conviction rates by sex, ethnicity, and class do not simply reflect who commits a crime

• The ONS warns that they are influenced by:

  • policing practices and priorities

  • where crime is concentrated

  • population structures (age, gender balance)

  • social and economic inequalities

Usefulness of police-recorded crime statistics

• Official police-recorded statistics give an inaccurate picture of how much crime actually happens

  • Sociologists argue they are not fully useful for showing the true level of crime in society

• Not all crimes are detected or witnessed

  • Crimes that are unseen or unknown can’t be reported — these are “invisible crimes"

  • E.g., domestic violence, online fraud, drug dealing

• Some crimes are dealt with privately

  • Crimes discovered in workplaces (e.g. theft or fraud) may be handled internally

  • Employers may fire the employee instead of reporting it to the police

  • These crimes are not recorded officially, so they don’t appear in statistics

• Underreporting by victims

  • Many victims choose not to report crimes to the police

  • Reasons include:

    • seeing the crime as too minor (e.g., petty vandalism, bike theft)

    • believing the police can’t or won’t act (e.g., hate crime)

    • feeling there was no real loss

    • thinking the police won’t handle it sensitively (e.g., sexual assault)

    • fear of consequences, especially in domestic violence

    • embarrassment, e.g. in online scams or dating fraud

  • This means official statistics often show less crime than the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW)

• Not all reported crimes are recorded

  • Even when reported, some crimes are not recorded because:

    • the police think it’s too trivial

    • they doubt the honesty or accuracy of the report

    • they believe there’s not enough evidence

• The "dark figure" of crime

  • The “dark figure” refers to unreported and unrecorded crimes

  • These hidden crimes mean official statistics are incomplete

  • Sociologists, therefore, treat police statistics with caution

• Interpreting trends carefully

  • Increases in police-recorded crime don’t always mean more crime is happening — they could reflect:

    • better recording practices by the police

    • greater awareness of certain crimes (e.g., violence against women)

    • improved police sensitivity, encouraging more victims to report (e.g., hate crimes)

  • These factors make it difficult to compare trends over time