UK crime rate rises as cybercrimes, fraud included in statistics

A new report suggests the crime rate in the United Kingdom has risen to more than 11.6 million offences in the one year to June 2015.  

The sharp rise is due to the inclusion, for the first time, of 5.1m online fraud incidents as well as cyber-crimes based on police statistics in England and Wales.

Figures on online fraud and cyber-crime were published before but could not be included in the headline figures. Their addition to the crime survey now lead to a headline figure of 11.6m, compared with the 7m estimate for one year to June 2014.

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the publication of a combined estimate followed growing concern that the rise in cyber-crime makes up for the long-term fall in crime from 19m at their peak in 1995 to 6.5m by June this year.

 “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 from ONS said.

Adrian Leppard, the City of London police commissioner had told his colleagues that the changes will add an extra three million fraud and cyber incidents to the overall level of crime in the UK.

The fraud figures include victims who lost assets less than £20 to those losing more than £5,000.

Earlier this year, the Crime Survey for England and Wales revealed 8% drop in crimes. However, the latest data shows a 5% increase in police-recorded cases including violence. There was also 41% rise in sexual offences including rape, which police attribute to a greater willingness of victims to report such crimes.

The apparent surge in the crime rate is likely to reignite the debate over whether a long-term decline in crime has taken place in the country over the past two decades. Some analysts put police and the crime at par saying police are the bulwark of state and they will do the very work that state needs and wants them to do.

"The relationship between money spent on police force and the crime reduction is not a consistent one.The real story is that there has been a concurrent rise in complaints against police and the huge increase in the complaint is that people being mistreated by the police just as happens in the United States. That coupled with another study that in Britain, black suspects are likely to be tasered than their white counterparts which is also consistent with what happens in the United States", Daniel Patrick Welch, a Boston-based political commentator told Press TV. 

"There’s austerity question, yes, cutting budget back in general hurts the people and that is the issue that has not been tackled by the people in Great Britain. About terrorism, it’s yet another huge shame that by increasing national security spending on the claim of making  the country safe when in fact with depleting budget, emptying treasury and spending them on war create deaths and actually more terrorism abroad that blows back in the form of resentment", he added.           

The Home Office has already disputed the figure saying whether online fraud and cyber-crime should be added to the headline figure to create a new total.

Opposition Labour party says the figures would undermine the government’s claim that cutting police force was justified by the fall in crime. “Labour have long said that crime is not falling, it is changing. Now we know the truth”, Labour’s policing spokesman, Jack Dromey said.

Dromey said the figure provided by ONS is enough to force the government to come clean about the new wave of crime hitting the British public. 

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