‘Reporting rates are likely to be lower in cases where there is low or no harm, but merely inconvenience, to the victim’.
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Half of the online incidents led to financial losses, and of those 78% of victims received compensation of a few sort, with 62% being reimbursed in full. Most were fully compensated by the banks or building societies but for 22% – more than 1m incidents – that was not the case.
The addition of these figures to official statistics will not bode well for government claims about getting tough on crime, pushing the number of offences up by what many believe will be several million.
Attacking social media accounts and email was also noted for being commonplace.
Separate police figures were much lower for recorded instances of cyber crime, which the ONS said was due to the different way the figures are recorded.
Sex offences have almost doubled from 1,963 to 3,858, according to numbers released by the Office for National Statistics today.
“It has been argued that crime has not actually fallen but changed, moving to newer forms of crime not captured by the survey”, John Flatley, head of crime at the ONS, was quoted by the Guardian as saying.
“However, it is not possible to say whether these new figures represent an increase or decrease compared with earlier levels”.
“We are seeing a reduction in crimes like burglary and robbery, with other crimes such as sexual offences and fraud rising in prevalence. There is little clarity around the impact of cyber-crime against the United Kingdom economy, and of course the statistics released today only consider crimes against the person rather than corporate crime”, Pordage said.
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the release and reaction to the latest crime Office for National Statistics crime figures.
An ONS spokesman said: “Although we estimate that there were more than seven million fraud and computer misuse incidents in the past year, this does not necessarily imply a recent rise in crime as the new measures bring into scope a large volume of offences not previously included in the Crime Survey”.
As the minister in charge of policing and crime, Mike Penning could be expected to know how to protect himself from criminals.
The rise in the murder rate, however, which is not prone to changes in recording practices, can be seen as a warning that a turning point has been reached after 20 years in which England and Wales have become safer places to live.
“Tackling these horrific crimes is a priority, and we have introduced new laws that mean anyone caught in possession of a knife for a second time will now face a mandatory minimum sentence in prison”.
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The data also suggest that on average one in 12 adults have experienced fraud and one in 22 is a victim of cyber fraud.
