New crime data show headline offences unchanged, but fraud, cyber‑crime and domestic abuse are climbing sharply across England and Wales.
The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) for the year ending June 2026 paints a mixed picture. While the total number of headline crimes – a bundle that includes theft, robbery, criminal damage, fraud, computer misuse and violence – stayed essentially flat at about 9.7 million incidents, several individual categories moved in opposite directions.
At the same time, the Home Office’s police recorded crime dataset, which captures offences reported to and logged by police forces, highlights declines in homicide, knife-enabled offences and firearm crimes. Together, the two sources give a fuller view of what households and individuals are confronting on a daily basis.
Overall headline crime remains stable
According to the CSEW, the count of headline offences in the latest twelve-month period was 9.7 million, virtually unchanged from the previous year’s 9.3 million. This stability masks underlying shifts: theft incidents held at 2.7 million, but other household theft – thefts occurring outside a dwelling – surged by 27% to roughly 833 000 cases.
Fraud showed the opposite trend, jumping 11% to 4.5 million incidents. The surge was driven chiefly by a 13% rise in bank and credit-account fraud, which climbed to 2.8 million reports. Computer misuse also accelerated, registering a 23% increase to 817 000 incidents, largely because unauthorised access to personal data rose by 29%.
Key offence categories: where numbers are falling and where they are climbing
Theft, fraud and cyber-crime
Traditional theft appears to be on a long-term decline. Compared with the 2016 survey, theft incidents are down 27%, and the 1995 peak of 11.6 million has vanished. However, the rise in other household theft indicates that burglars are shifting focus to cars, bicycles and other items left outside homes.
Fraud, by contrast, has been on an upward trajectory since it entered the CSEW in 2017. The 34% increase compared with the March 2017 baseline underscores the growing impact of online scams, counterfeit payment cards and sophisticated social-engineering attacks.
Computer misuse, while still far below its 2017 high of 1.8 million, is climbing again. The CSEW attributes the jump to a sharp rise in incidents where personal information was accessed without permission. Parallel data from Report Fraud – the national cyber-crime reporting service – confirm a 9% rise in recorded computer-misuse offences over the same period.
Violence, homicide and weapon-related offences
Police-recorded homicide slipped marginally by 1% to 512 cases, putting the homicide rate at 8.3 per million people. Knife-enabled offences fell 6% to 48 615 incidents, and firearm offences dropped 8% to 5 065, the lowest levels seen since 2015.
Robbery presents a nuanced story. Offences against personal property declined 7% to 57 193, yet total robbery – now boosted by a change in recording rules that re-classifies many shop-based attacks as robbery of business property – rose 10% to 88 282. The clarification, introduced in April 2025, required police to record any theft from a retail premise that involved threat or use of force as a robbery, inflating the business-property figure by 67%.
Violence, abuse and harassment: rising concerns
The CSEW’s separate self-completion module reveals unsettling growth in personal safety threats. Domestic abuse prevalence climbed to 9.6% of adults – about 4.7 million people – up from 7.8% a year earlier. The increase was driven primarily by a jump in partner abuse, which rose from 6.1% to 7.9%.
Sexual victimisation affected 2.1% of adults (roughly 1 million people), with women reporting it at 2.8% and men at 1.4%. Stalking was experienced by 3.9% of the adult population, while overall harassment reached a new high of 10.0%, up from 8.3% the previous year. Repeated harassment – the definition closest to the police’s legal standard – rose from 2.3% to 3.5%.
Police-recorded data echo some of these trends. While police figures are not ideal for measuring domestic abuse prevalence, they recorded 827 684 domestic-abuse-related offences in the year, almost identical to the previous year. Violence without injury saw a modest 2% rise, whereas violence with injury fell 1%.
Anti-social behaviour (ASB) also showed an uptick, with the CSEW estimating that 41.4% of respondents experienced or witnessed ASB, up from 36.7% the year before. Part of the increase stems from questionnaire changes introduced in April 2025, but the figure still signals a broad perception of neighbourhood disorder.
Overall, the combination of headline crime stability, rising fraud and cyber-crime, and heightened rates of domestic and sexual abuse suggests that while traditional street-level offences are receding, newer forms of victimisation are gaining ground. Policymakers and law-enforcement agencies will need to balance resources between reducing legacy crimes and tackling the digital and relational threats that are increasingly shaping public safety.
