Crime has increased on Transport for London services – with the Central and Northern lines being named as the Tube lines with most offences.
TfL revealed a total of 23,819 offences were reported to police between January 1 and June 30 this year – a 1.3 per cent increase on the same six-month period the previous year, equating to an additional 300 offences.
But there was a big drop in robbery, in part due to targeted policing – down 18.6 per cent to 1,270 offences.
There was an even bigger fall in robbery on the bus network, from 1,033 to 759 – a 26.5 per cent drop.
The Central line and Northern line – the two longest lines on the London Underground – had the highest number of crimes, more than 1,000 each. The Piccadilly line - recently dubbed the Purgatory line - was third.
King’s Cross was the station with most reported crimes (230) followed by Tottenham Court Road (228), Oxford Circus (162), Leicester Square (156) and Stratford (151).
TfL said the increase in overall crime was driven by an increase in reporting of violent crime.
More than half of all offences happened on the Tube (12,416), followed by the buses (8,518) and Elizabeth line (1,316).
The figures do not include fare evasion or other byelaw offences.
Sexual offences rose network-wide, from 879 to 907. This included a 12.7 per cent increase on buses (43 additional offences, taking the total to 382).
The boroughs with the most sexual offences on buses were Hackney (22), Enfield (18) and Hillingdon, Croydon, Ealing and Hounslow (17 each).
Theft – typically pick-pocketing – accounted for 46 per cent of all crime.
TfL said the Met and BTP had focused their efforts on “highest harm offences”, such as violence against women and girls, including sexual offences and sexual harassment, as well as serious violence, keeping weapons off the network, robbery, hate crime and violence and aggression against TfL staff.
The slight increase in total crime came despite a 1.7 per cent decrease in passenger numbers and at a time when the Met saw a two per cent fall in reported crime across the capital.
A total of 338 reports were made to the Met of violence or public order offences against bus staff.
The Tube had the highest crime rate, of 20.7 per million journeys, down from 20.8 the previous year.
In comparison, the rate on national rail services is 26 crimes per million journeys.
The fall in robbery followed the targeting of offenders, including those on bail, alongside joint operations with TfL to “create a hostile environment for offenders”.
A BTP crackdown, codenamed Operation Flycatcher, investigating a series of linked robberies across London and Essex and resulted in the arrest of six teenagers responsible for more than 50 violent robberies across the rail network.
Another initiative to prevent serious violence and keep knives off the network resulted in officers patrolling at Finsbury Park stopping two masked individuals seen pushing through the barriers.
When searched, one was found to be carrying seven stolen phones, all of which were returned to their owners. The two offenders were connected to 18 robberies.
Hate crime fell by 8.3 per cent to 1,268 offences.
The figures, revealed in a regular report to TfL’s safety and security panel, bring together data from the Met for the bus network and the British Transport Police for London Underground, the Elizabeth line, London Overground, DLR and Trams, as well as TfL’s own data.
TfL has set the “ambitious” target of reducing the risk of being a victim of crime to fewer than nine crimes for every million journeys by the end of 2030.
Siwan Hayward, TfL’s director of security, policing and enforcement, said: “Millions of journeys are made every day on London’s public transport network without incident and the overall risk of witnessing or experiencing a crime on London’s transport network remains low.
“We have more than 500 uniformed officers deployed across our network and they are continuing to work closely with the Met Police and British Transport Police to keep the public safe.
“In the last year, we have seen a significant reduction in robbery levels by 18.6 per cent and a slight reduction in theft.”
Passengers who suffer or the Tube or other train services can report it to the British Transport Police by texting 61016. Bus passengers can report an incident online at met.police.uk or by calling 101.
