Included for the first time among the ONS’s crime estimates was the prevalence of cybercrime (eg, hacking and online/telephone fraud).
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Research found there were 5.1 million incidents of fraud in England and Wales in the a year ago, with 3.8 million victims.
“While the figures released today may appear high, I am certain that cyber crime remains one of the most under reported areas in our crime statistics”, said Louise Pordage, senior manager in KPMG’s cyber security practice.
“It is important to recognise that these new data are not simply uncovering new crimes, but finding better ways of capturing existing crime that has not been measured well in the past”, the ONS said in a statement. Almost 600,000 offences were referred to NFIB, including 237,494 offences reported by victims to Action Fraud (the UK’s national fraud reporting centre), 266,701 referrals from Cifas (a UK-wide fraud prevention service) and 95,489 cases from FFA United Kingdom (that represents the United Kingdom payments industry).
There have been warnings that the figures will add millions of offences to the overall crime count at a stroke, with claims it could rise by up to 40 per cent.
A large part of this rise is thought to be due to improved compliance with national recording standards by police forces in the past year…
Ironically, the data showed that the total number of other offences (not including fraud and cyber crime) had actually fallen eight percent from past year. Most were fully compensated by the banks or building societies but for 22% – more than 1m incidents – that was not the case.
Crime rose by almost 4% in Wales in the year to June, new police figures show.
Sex offences have almost doubled from 1,963 to 3,858, according to numbers released by the Office for National Statistics today.
“We are at the forefront of worldwide efforts to bring official crime statistics into the digital age”.
“Furthermore, these new estimates should be seen in the context of a reduction over the past 20 years in the more traditional forms of crime, from 19 million incidents a year in 1995 to under 7 million a year today”. The response to the figures has been positive, despite the obvious bad news, because it is good to get a handle on these kinds of things, albeit a short handle.
James Murphy, associate director for defence and Security at techUK said the figures demonstrate “the true scale of cyber-crime and gives police chiefs a greater understanding of the problem they face”.
“Crime is falling and it is also changing, and we are committed to tackling fraud and cyber crime”, he added. He told South Carolina that law enforcement would equip itself to meet this growing challenge: “There will be a cadre within law enforcement focused on these more sophisticated cyber-crimes”.
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On average one in 12 adults is a victim of fraud and one in 22 is a victim of cyber fraud, the figures show. Homicide, which includes murder, was at the highest level for four years.
