We have just updated the website to show the latest crime figures for October 2017. I’ve been looking at all our Octobers going back to 2011 and this is the highest one yet by total of reported ASB and crime at 585,734. The overall percentage difference is 7% greater than October 2016, but in the breakdown of category – Public Order has the greatest percentage increase at 36%, followed by Robbery at 30%. The greatest decrease was in ASB incidents by 10%, followed by Bike Theft at 5%. The great recession of 2008-09 was unusual in that crime actually fell throughout it and kept falling afterwards (and unemployment remained surprisingly low too). It seems that crime is drifting up again but that has to be weighed against a larger population – about 4-5 million more than in 2008. There may also have been more crimes actually reported and recorded than in the past – a factor not to be under-estimated.
The leading crime and postcode data research and analysis platform