Surge in gun and knife crime fuels recorded crime rise

Police recorded crime has jumped by around a seventh after sharp rises in knife and gun offences, new figures show.

Forces in England and Wales logged a total of 5.3 million crimes in the year ending September 2017- a 14% increase compared with the previous 12 months.

Statisticians said the data show continuing rises in the number of "higher-harm" violent offences, which were most evident in knife and gun crime categories.

The Office for National Statistics said that police-registered crime must be interpreted with caution, attributing much of the rise to changes in recording practices and increased confidence of victims in coming forward.

Its preferred measure, the Crime Survey for England and Wales, gave a total of 10.6 million incidents, which was a fall of 10%.

ONS statistician Mark Bangs said: "These latest figures indicate that levels of crime have continued to fall compared with the previous year, but this picture varied across
different types of crime and not all offence types showed falls.

"While overall levels of violent crime were not increasing, there is evidence of rises having occurred in some of the low incidence but more harmful categories such as knife and gun crime.

"The first year-on-year comparisons from new estimates of fraud, one of the most frequently occurring crimes, indicate fewer incidents were experienced by the general population compared with the previous year."