This article is from the source 'independent' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/crime-england-wales-reported-rise-13-per-cent-year-home-office-police-figures-sexual-offences-hate-a8008366.html
The article has changed 6 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 0 | Version 1 |
|---|---|
| Crime rises by half a million reported offences in England and Wales over last year, official figures show | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Crime recorded by police in England and Wales has risen by 13 per cent to 5.2 million offences in the past year, new figures show. | |
| The increase - 583,782 offences in real terms -has mainly been driven by a 19 per cent jump in violent crime. | |
| The Office for National Statistics said the rise represented both a genuine increase in some offences and improvements to the way they are recorded by police. | |
| John Flatley, an analyst at the ONS, said: “Today's figures suggest that the police are dealing with a growing volume of crime. | |
| “While improvements made by police forces in recording crime are still a factor in the increase, we judge that there have been genuine increases in crime – particularly in some of the low incidence but more harmful categories.” | |
| Mr Flatley added separate figures from the Crime Survey for England and Wales, which is considered a better indicator of long-term trends because it also records unreported offences, has shown an overall decline in crime. | |
| More than 1.2 million “violence against the person” offences were recorded, up a fifth on the previous year. | |
| The ONS said the biggest increases were seen in stalking and violence without injury, adding: “ Most of this volume increase was thought to result from improved recording practices but it is likely that rises in the most serious categories reflect genuine rises in violent crime.” | |
| Knife crime has risen by more than a quarter to the highest level in six years, the figures revealed in a week that has seen three people stabbed to death in London in little over 24 hours. | |
| Police recorded almost 37,000 attacks involving a knife or sharp instrument in the year to June, while theft has also increased. | |
| There was an increase of 19 per cent in the number of sexual offences recorded by the police , which rose to 129,700. | |
| The ONS attributed the change to more victims coming forward to police and forces improving recording practices, following a 2014 inspection by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary that “identified significant under-recording” of the crimes. | |
| Figures also revealed that there were 711 deaths or serious injuries caused by illegal driving and a rise in bank and credit card fraud. |