Police-recorded crime up 9% amid rises in homicide and knife-related offences

Police recorded crime has increased by almost a tenth, fuelled by rises in homicides, knife-related offences, robberies and theft.

Official figures show that forces in England and Wales registered a total of 5.6 million offences in the year to June.

This was a rise of 9% compared with the previous 12 months.

The data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed a 14% increase in police-recorded homicide offences, from 630 to 719. These figures exclude the terrorist attacks in London and Manchester.

There were also jumps in the numbers of recorded robberies (up 22%), sexual offences (up 18%), vehicle-related theft (up 7%) and burglaries (2%).

Statisticians said the increase in the number of crimes recorded by the police does not necessarily mean the level of crime has increased.

The other measure used to track levels of offending, the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), showed that most types of crime have stayed at similar levels to the previous year, including violence.

However, estimates drawn from the survey did show an 8% increase in theft compared with the previous year.

Joe Traynor from the ONS Centre for Crime and Justice said: “Over recent decades, we’ve seen continued falls in overall levels of crime but in the last year the trend has been more stable.

“The latest figures show no change in the total level of crime but variation by crime types.

“We saw rises in some types of theft and in some lower-volume but higher-harm types of violence, balanced by a fall in the high-volume offence of computer misuse.

“There was no change in other high-volume offences such as overall violence, criminal damage and fraud. To put today’s crime survey figures into context, only two out of 10 adults experienced crime in the latest year.”