Crime Rate in England and Wales Soars Due to Cybercrime

According to the latest crime figures, the crime rate for England and Wales has doubled to more than 11.6 million offences as cybercrime is included for the first time.

The crime survey for England and Wales, which is based on people's experience of crime, showed a sharp rise in the headline figures due to the inclusion of approximately 5.1 million online fraud incidents and 2.5 million cybercrime offences. Excluding cybercrime, the underlying crime rate continued to fall, by 8 per cent to an estimated 6.5 million offences in the 12 months to June.

John Flatley, head of crime at the ONS, said:

"It has been argued that crime has not actually fallen but changed, moving to newer forms of crime not captured by the survey. Clearly some crime has moved online but this should be seen in the context of the long-term fall in traditional crime."

Glen Watson, Deputy National Statistician for Popularity and Public Policy at the ONS, said:

"Although we estimate that there were more than 7m fraud and computer misuse incidents in the past year, this does not necessarily imply a recent rise in crime, as the new measures bring into scope a large volume of offences not previously included in the Crime Survey for England and Wales.

"Furthermore, these new estimates should be seen in the context of a reduction over the past 20 years in the more traditional forms of crime, from 19m incidents a year in 1995 to under 7m a year today."

Despite the Home Office disputing whether the new estimates for cybercrime and online fraud should've been added, due to the statistics being derived from trial data from a smaller sample, the estimates were included in the official statistics.

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Criminal Solicitors