Welcome to the Winter edition of the ONS Centre for Crime and Justice newsletter, which includes news on recent and upcoming releases and events, and updates on the work we have been doing in the last 6 months.
Look out for the next edition in Summer 2022.
|
Redevelopment of domestic abuse statistics
To ensure our statistics continue to provide the most accurate information and meet the needs of users, we are undertaking a user engagement, research and testing program to improve the collection of data on domestic abuse from the Crime Survey for England and Wales. In October 2021 we awarded a research contract to a consortium led by the University of Bristol to take this work forward over the next six months. Further information on the aims of this research alongside an update on our work to date are outlined in our research update which was published alongside the domestic abuse publication in November. We aim to complete this stage of the research by Spring 2022 and will provide a further update on progress alongside the annual crime publication in Summer 2022.
Violence against women and girls
Crimes which disproportionately affect women and girls, such as sexual violence, domestic abuse, and stalking have devastating consequences. We have been working collaboratively to produce our first analytical article on this topic, highlighting not only the scale and severity of the problem, but also where there are evidence gaps. Using existing Crime Survey for England and Wales figures and working with other government departments, support services and organisations – including the Home Office, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Department of Education, NHS Digital, the Crown Prosecution Service, SafeLives and Women’s Aid – we have pulled together data which supports the UK Government’s Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy, launched in the summer. All the evidence we’ve found is outlined in our data landscape. We are already collaborating with others across government to fill some of the key evidence gaps highlighted by this work – including the wider aspects of harassment and data available through the health system.
Crime Severity Score data tool update
Our Crime Severity Score (CSS) data tool is designed to provide Crime Severity Scores for individual community safety partnerships, police force areas and regions. We have now updated the tool using sentencing data for England and Wales up to year ending December 2019.
These scores consider both the volume and the severity of offences recorded by the police, by weighting offences differently. The tool can be used to explore:
- Trends in the severity of crime and demand on police over time
- Differences in crime severity between different geographical areas
More information on how the tool was initially developed and how it can be used are found here.
Children’s Crime Survey
We held three stakeholder events in October where we set out our aims for re-development of the children’s crime survey and launched a questionnaire to gather views and requirements for data on crime-related topics and childhood vulnerability. We received 25 responses from stakeholders across government, academia and the third sector and will communicate a summary of the findings and our next steps in a spring progress update.
Exploring the feasibility of a survey measuring child abuse in the UK
We are conducting a feasibility study, to determine whether a national survey could provide an effective source of data on the current scale and nature of child abuse to be used by policy makers, service providers, and practitioners to hopefully, over time help reduce the prevalence of child abuse, and improve victims' experiences of services. Findings so far from the first phase of research; relating to the coverage, methodology, ethics and data accuracy, were published in January 2021. A public consultation to gather views on the findings was also launched and we published our response to the feedback received in July 2021. As a result of our research and the public consultation, we commissioned NatCen to carry out further essential qualitative research with children and young adults with experiences of abuse, parents of children with experiences of abuse, headteachers, school special educational needs coordinators, school safeguarding leads and local authority child protection leads. The fieldwork has now been completed and we will publish a progress update in April 2022, which will summarise the key findings, our conclusion to phase one, and outline our next steps.
More information on the aims of the qualitative research can be found within our consultation response.
What's new in ONS Crime and Justice statistics?
Publications released since September 2021:
Crime Severity score data tool, published 19 October 2021. Crime Severity Score (CSS) data for police force areas and community safety partnerships, which usually equate to local authorities. Includes a data tool to enable production of summary charts on trends and comparisons between areas.
Domestic abuse in England and Wales overview, published 24 November 2021. Figures on domestic abuse from police recorded crime and several different organisations. The number of police recorded domestic abuse-related crimes in England and Wales rose 6% in the year ending March 2021 to 845,734; this follows increases seen in previous years and may reflect improved recording by the police alongside increased reporting by victims.
Violence against women and girls (dataset), published 24 November 2021. A comprehensive list of data sources relating to violence against women and girls, bringing together a range of different sources from across government, academia and the voluntary sector.
Violence against women and girls (analysis), published 24 November 2021. Violence against women and girls can lead to significant and long-lasting impacts such as mental health issues, suicide attempts and homelessness, ONS analysis shows. In the year ending March 2020, the Crime Survey for England and Wales estimated 1.6 million women aged 16 to 74 years in England and Wales experienced domestic abuse, around 7% of the female population. The crime survey also estimated that 3% of women aged 16 to 74 years in England and Wales experienced sexual assault (including attempts) and 5% experienced stalking.
Nature of violent crime tables (dataset), published 29 November 2021. Violent crime numbers, prevalence and location from the Crime Survey for England and Wales and police recorded crime. Also includes data from the telephone-operated Crime Survey for England and Wales showing prevalence of violence for May 2020 to March 2021 and various demographic characteristics.
Offences involving the use of weapons, dataset, published 29 November 2021 Data tables relating to offences involving weapons as recorded by police and hospital episode statistics.
Crime in England and Wales: year ending September 2021, published 27 January 2022. Crime against households and adults using data from police recorded crime and the new Telephone-operated Crime Survey for England and Wales. Includes the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on crime and people’s perceptions of crime during the October 2020 to September 2021 interview periods. The analysis shows a 14% increase in total crime, driven by a 47% increase in fraud and computer misuse.
Property crime tables: year ending March 2021, published 27 January 2022. Annual data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and metal theft offences recorded by the police, including demographic and offence type breakdowns and time series data.
|
Geographies
Crime statistics are available at several different geographies. Below are links to Police Force Area (PFA) and Community Safety Partnership (CSP) level crime data.
-
Police Force Area data tables - Data from police recorded crime. Shows the number of police recorded crimes, percentage change from previous year and rate per 1,000 population by offence group and knife and sharp instrument offences by Police Force Area.
-
Recorded crime data by Community Safety Partnership area - Recorded crime figures for Community Safety Partnership areas, which equate usually to local authorities. Contains the number of offences for the last two years, percentage change between these two time periods and rates per 1,000 population for the latest year.
Further information on progress being made to improve crime statistics for England and Wales. can be found in our annual update document Improving Crime Statistics for England and Wales.
|
Upcoming publications
- Homicide in England and Wales: year ending March 2021 – 10 February 2022.
- Victimisation and its relationship to substance use, mental health disorders and wellbeing in England and Wales, year ending March 2021 – 3 March 2022
- Child victims of modern slavery in the UK: March 2022 - 29 March 2022 provisional
- The impact of crime on victims and society: March 2022 – 30 March 2022 provisional
- Exploring the feasibility of a survey measuring child abuse in the UK: research update April 2022 – draft date
- Crime in England and Wales: year ending December 2021 – 28 April 2022
Other related Crime and Justice Statistics
Home Office (HO) produce statistics on crime outcomes, arrests made by the police and other powers, number of police officers and other aspects of police personnel; HO also publish police recorded crime by Community Safety Partnership area within their police recorded crime open data tables.
Ministry of Justice produce statistics for England and Wales on the courts, prison population, perpetrators and reoffending.
If you have any questions around these publications, both government departments can be contacted at the following email addresses:
Home Office: CrimeandPoliceStats@homeoffice.gov.uk
Ministry of Justice: ESD@justice.gov.uk
|
Devolved countries
For crime and justice statistics relating to other UK countries, please see the links below:
Accessing our data
The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) microdata is made available through the UK Data Service and the Secure Research Service (SRS):
-
UK Data Service – End User Licence versions of the datasets are available through the UK Data service going back to 1983.
-
Secure Research Service – Approved researchers can access the CSEW microdata through the SRS, giving them access to more sensitive data, for example, the self completion module. Data are available back to 2012/13 with further years being made available towards the end of this year.
Useful links
You may also find the links below useful:
-
Centre for Crime and Justice - the Centre for Crime and Justice aims to improve understanding of the extent and nature of crime in our society by developing our statistics of the latest trends using all available sources
-
National Statistical - news and insight from the ONS
- ONS Twitter account @ONSFocus is the official platform for news and discussion about what’s happening at the ONS. It is designed for everyone with an in interest in the numbers that matter most and how they are produced. While the main @ONS account will continue to be the place to find out statistics, @ONSFocus will be the place for talk about the ONS itself.
- Follow the Crime statistician's ONS Twitter account
Feedback
We’re always interested in improving our understanding of how our data is used by different customers; if you’d like to get in touch with any wider feedback for us, on either our publications or this newsletter, please email us at crimestatistics@ons.gov.uk, or call us on +44 (0)20 7592 8695
Subscription
We encourage you to share this email with colleagues and invite them to join up.
Contact us
Should you have any questions about the content of this newsletter, please email us at crimestatistics@ons.gov.uk , or call us on +44 (0)20 7592 8695
|
