About police.uk crime data

Since the beginning of 2009, Police.uk has published street level crime and anti-social behaviour statistics from all Police forces in England and Wales. This allows members of the public to see what is happening in their local area.

Since the first publication, Police.uk has been developed to include information relating to 'Justice Outcomes' (introduced in May 2012 and provided by partners in the criminal justice system) and 'Stop and Search' activity (introduced with a sample of forces in April 2015).

Yes. Crimes and ASB which occur on a moving train are attributed to the end destination of that journey. Please visit crimemaps.btp.police.uk/about/ for more information.

Wherever possible all incidents of crime and anti-social behaviour are displayed on the map, on or near the street or point of interest that they happened. However, there may be certain incidents where the location of the crime is not known by the victim or investigating police force. For example, the victim may not know or be able to recall where a crime took place, or it may have occurred during travel between two locations.

Additionally, if anonymising the crime location would lead to it being shown more than 20km from where it actually took place, then these crimes are not shown on the map.

All crime and anti-social behaviour data on Police.uk is provided by individual police forces and we will work with them to provide the most accurate information as possible. You can find out more about the data at data.police.uk/about.

Sentencing in individual cases is a matter for the independent judiciary, who make their decisions based on the full facts of each case. These facts will vary for each case and therefore the outcomes (sentences) are also likely to vary.

The crime categories featured on Police.uk are very broad and capture a wide range of offences and severity of offence; for example 'violent crime' will include common assault and murder. Therefore, the type of outcomes will vary considerably.

HM Courts & Tribunals Service is unable to answer questions on specific sentencing decisions. If an individual is unhappy with their sentencing outcome they can appeal to a higher court.

Out-of-court punishments given by the police can be a vital tool for dealing with low level crime in the community. That is why the police and criminal justice agencies are working together to ensure there is a clear and consistent approach which victims and communities can understand. However, individual decisions remain an operational matter for the police and Crown Prosecution Service.

Open.justice.gov.uk provides more information about how the justice system works.

All crime: Total for all categories.

Anti-social behaviour: Includes personal, environmental and nuisance anti-social behaviour.

Bicycle theft: Includes the taking without consent or theft of a pedal cycle.

Burglary: Includes offences where a person enters a house or other building with the intention of stealing.

Criminal damage and arson: Includes damage to buildings and vehicles and deliberate damage by fire.

Drugs: Includes offences related to possession, supply and production.

Other crime: Includes forgery, perjury and other miscellaneous crime.

Other theft: Includes theft by an employee, blackmail and making off without payment.

Possession of weapons: Includes possession of a weapon, such as a firearm or knife.

Public order: Includes offences which cause fear, alarm or distress.

Robbery: Includes offences where a person uses force or threat of force to steal.

Shoplifting: Includes theft from shops or stalls.

Theft from the person: Includes crimes that involve theft directly from the victim (including handbag, wallet, cash, mobile phones) but without the use or threat of physical force.

Vehicle crime: Includes theft from or of a vehicle or interference with a vehicle.

Violence and sexual offences: Includes offences against the person such as common assaults, Grievous Bodily Harm and sexual offences.

Download a complete mapping between Home Office Offence Codes and the Categories. 

This is the first step towards publishing more information on what happens after a crime is recorded. However, there are some reasons as to why you may not be able to see an outcome for a crime, which include:

1. Anti-social behaviour (ASB)

   Police.uk provides an up-to-date picture of where incidents of ASB recorded by the police have occurred at street level but it is not yet possible to show what happened afterwards.

   This is because, unlike recorded crimes which are investigated by the police, a number of local agencies work together to respond to ASB and this set up varies across the country.
   
   As such, the way in which outcomes are recorded also varies considerably across the country. We will explore ways to show this information in the future.

2. Different IT systems

   For technical reasons, some crimes which go to the courts cannot yet be matched to an outcome. The number of court outcomes that can be shown varies from area to area due to the different IT systems in place across the country.
   
   Criminal justice agencies have had to retrospectively make their IT systems compatible. While the outcomes on Police.uk show the progress that has been made in that respect, it is still a work in progress.
   
   The Ministry of Justice is working with police forces to match outcomes to all crimes that go to court and we expect the level of information to improve over time as new IT systems and solutions are introduced.

3. More than one outcome

   We display data for the most punitive outcome given by the court, therefore sometimes an offender could be given more than one outcome but only the most punitive will be shown e.g. an offender may have been asked to pay a fine by the court and ordered to pay compensation to the victim, but if the fine was the greater amount only this outcome will be displayed.

All cases will be dealt with appropriately by the justice system, even if an outcome is not represented in the data at the current time.

For some crimes more than one offender is charged and prosecuted, and so there may be more than one set of actions or outcomes listed for that crime (e.g. 'Suspect charged' is listed more than once, which reflects multiple offenders involved in a crime).

Although this makes the information more complex to present we believe it is better to provide the public with information on all the actions and outcomes that result from a crime being committed.

The police and the Crown Prosecution Service have to make an assessment of the evidence available, whether it is witness, forensic or even hearsay.

In circumstances where there is insufficient evidence, the decision may be taken to focus resources on those offences which are capable of being charged and prosecuted.

There might be a number of reasons why no further action was possible. Some cases are just undetectable. However, cases can be reopened if more evidence becomes available.

This could be for a number of reasons including:

• there haven't been any outcomes recorded for a particular category within that month
• there will be a significant proportion of cases where there hasn't been a sufficient amount of time for an outcome to be reached
• the data is currently unavailable and matching the crime with an outcome is not possible. This varies by police force.

The 3 years crime data is reported quarterly rather than monthly so that the data is readable. Only data for full quarters are reported in the overview graphs as these display by quarter.

Showing data for an incomplete quarter might provide a misleading impression that crime rates are lower for that quarter.

For graphs which display 3 year totals, the most current data is used even where this is for an incomplete quarter, as the values are not broken down by quarter.