User:Gilgongo/Crime in the United Kingdom: Difference between revisions

This is not a Wikipedia article: This is a workpage, a collection of material and work in progress that may or may not be incorporated into an article. It should not necessarily be considered factual or authoritative.

Crime in the United Kingdom describes acts of violent crime and non-violent crime that take place within the United Kingdom.

Responsibility for crime in England and Wales is split between the Home Office, the government department responsible for reducing and preventing crime, along with law enforcement in the United Kingdom; and the Ministry of Justice, which runs the Justice system, including its courts and prisons. In Scotland, this responsibility falls on the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, which acts as the sole public prosecutor in Scotland, and is therefore responsible for the prosecution of crime in Scotland.

Comparison of crime rates over time in the UK is complicated by a history of significant change since the late 1990’s. See Crime statistics in the United Kingdom in order to better interpret the information in this article.

In common with many countries around the world, trends in overall crime in the UK have fallen by almost 90% since 1996, with some categories such as fraud and computer misuse seeing rises. Apparent increases, particularly since 2014, in high-harm offenses such as knife crime and other ‘violence againt the person’, has shown to be largely due to changes in police counting rules, but the extent of this is disputed. Police recorded crime figures are not national statics since they fall short of the required standards for that accrediation, but the accuracy of police reported crime has become sufficiently reliable to be able to compare most crimes from at least 2020, and in many cases earlier. However, the interpretation of crime statistics over time in the UK remains problematic, particularly for high-harm categories.