The latest crime figures for England and Wales show police-recorded offences of shoplifting and theft from the person remain at record highs, while homicides are at their lowest level for more than a decade.
Figures have also been published estimating for the first time the proportion of people aged 16 and over who have been a victim of domestic abuse, sexual assault or stalking.
Here the PA news agency looks at the latest crime numbers and trends, which have been released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
– Shoplifting
Shoplifting offences have been running at record levels since last year and have now hit a new high.
Some 530,643 offences were recorded by forces in England and Wales in 2024/25.
This is up 20% from 444,022 in 2023/24 and is the highest total since current police recording practices began in 2002/03.
– Theft from the person
Offences involving theft from the person have also remained at record levels.
Some 151,220 of these offences were recorded by forces in the year to March, up 15% from 131,584 in the previous 12 months – again, the highest since current recording began in 2002/03.
– Knife crime
Some 53,047 knife crime offences were recorded by forces in England and Wales in 2024/25.
This is down slightly by 1% from 53,685 in 2023/24 and is 4% below the pre-pandemic figure of 55,170 offences in 2019/20.
Knife-enabled homicides stood at 204 in the year to March, down 23% from 265 in the previous 12 months.
The number of offences classed as knife-enabled threats to kill has risen slightly, up 7% year on year from 5,690 to 6,060.
Both of these totals are higher than those recorded before the pandemic (4,935 in 2019/20).
The number of offences classed as “possession of an article with a blade or point” stood at 28,314 in 2024/25, up 2% year on year from 27,646 and higher than the pre-pandemic figure of 23,265 in 2019/20.
It is also nearly double the figure for 2016/17 (14,453).
– Violence against the person
A total of 1.9 million offences classed as “violence against the person” were recorded by police in England and Wales in 2024/25, down 4% from 2.0 million the previous year but above the pre-pandemic figure of 1.8 million in 2019/20.
– Homicides
Police forces recorded 535 homicides in the year to March, down 6% from 567 in the previous year and the lowest annual figure for more than a decade, since 533 in 2013/14.
– Total police recorded crime
Police forces recorded 6.6 million crimes in England and Wales in 2024/25, down slightly by 1% from 6.7 million in 2023/24.
The total is up from 6.1 million in the pre-pandemic year of 2019/20, and from 4.2 million a decade earlier in 2014/15.
This is likely to reflect “changes in police activity and recording practices” as well as genuine changes in trends in crimes reported to and recorded by forces, meaning the figures do “not tend to be a good indicator of general trends in crime”, the ONS said.
– Domestic abuse, sexual assault and stalking
About one in 10 people (10.6%) aged 16 and over in England and Wales are estimated to have been victims of at least one of the crime types of domestic abuse, sexual assault or stalking in the year to March.
The figure is closer to one in eight (12.8%) for women, while for men it is slightly lower at about one in 12 (8.4%).
The percentages equate to an estimated 5.1 million people aged 16 and over, of which 3.2 million are women and nearly 2.0 million are men.
It is the first time an estimate has been made of the combined prevalence of domestic abuse, sexual assault and stalking.
The figures are based on data collected as part of the ONS Crime Survey for England and Wales, not police-recorded crime.
The survey measures experiences of crime, with domestic abuse, sexual assault and stalking referred to as “crime types” because in some cases a criminal offence may not have occurred.
A slightly higher estimate of 5.4 million people or 11.3% has been made for the previous 12 months – the year to March 2024 – which equates to 3.4 million women (14.0%) and 2.0 million men (8.6%).
The ONS said that because these combined estimates are still in development and are subject to change, caution should be taken when making comparisons between the two years and is it not possible to say whether the difference is statistically significant.
Estimates just for domestic abuse suggest 7.8% of those aged 16 and over experienced this crime in 2024/25, the equivalent of about 3.8 million people, which is broadly unchanged on 8.0% in 2023/24.
The ONS said this estimate can be compared year on year but that the latest figures show “no statistically significant change” on the previous 12 months.
– Overall experiences of crime
Separate figures from the ONS Crime Survey for England and Wales suggest people aged 16 and over experienced 9.4 million incidents of crime in the year to March 2025, up from 8.8 million in the previous 12 months.
The rise is mainly due to a 31% rise in fraud, which accounts for 4.2 million incidents and is the highest estimate for this type of crime since fraud was first measured in the survey in 2016/17.
The overall total of 9.4 million incidents in 2024/25 is 16% lower than the total of 11.2 million for 2016/17, however.
The survey covers a range of personal and household victim-based crime, including theft, robbery, criminal damage, fraud, computer misuse and violence with or without injury, but does not include sexual offences, stalking, harassment and domestic abuse, which are presented separately.
Experiences of theft, criminal damage and violence with or without injury, as measured by the ONS survey, have been on a broad downwards trend since the mid-1990s.
