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Crime in Lancashire
2006/07

August 2007

Picture of a fingerprint

Introduction

Lancashire crime statistics are derived from an annual (External) Home Office publication "Crime in England and Wales" that combines the reporting of police recorded crime and the British Crime Survey (BCS) results. Definitions and perceptions of crime change all the time as does people's willingness to tell the police about it. The above two sources provide a complementary series that together are held to provide a better picture of crime than could be obtained from either series alone.

• The police recorded crime report provides a good measure of trends in well-reported crimes, is an important indicator of police workload, and can be used for local crime pattern analysis. Recorded crime provides the only measure of homicide and also the only reliable measure of relatively uncommon crimes such as robbery. Unlike the BCS, recorded crime also includes crimes committed against businesses and against those aged under 16. Police recorded crime relates to the location of the incident. Unless otherwise stated, this is the main source of the Lancashire statistics used in this article.
• British Crime Survey results are based on interviews conducted with adults living in private households and relates to where the respondent lives. For the crime types it covers, the BCS can provide a better reflection of the true extent of crime because it includes crimes that are not reported to the police and thus not recorded by them. The BCS does not aim to provide a total count of crime but does give a better indicator of trends in crime over time because it is unaffected by changes in levels of reporting to the police, and in police recording practices. It is estimated that about 40% of all BCS crime is reported to the police although this varies for individual offence types.

The National Picture

The release of the 2006/07 crime statistics by the Home Office was accompanied by a report (External) Crime in England and Wales 2006/07 that provides a voluminous output of crime data and a wealth of information and interpretation of the national crime situation. A few selected key points are given below:

• Based on BCS interviews in 2006/07 it is estimated that there were approximately 11.3 million crimes against adults living in private households. Police recorded crime in the same year amounted to 5.4 million. Compared with 2005/06 the BCS shows a 3% rise in crime (deemed as not statistically significant) and police recorded crime shows a 2% decrease
• Crime appears to be stabilising after a long period of reduction. BCS crime has fallen by 42% since last peaking in 1995, representing over 8 million fewer crimes, with domestic burglary falling by 59%, vehicle crime by 61% and violent crime by 41%. On the recorded crime side, both domestic burglary and theft of and from vehicles have continued to fall over the same period. With both these crimes, having security measures in place was strongly associated with lower levels of victimisation.
• The risk of becoming a victim of crime increased by one percentage point over the year to 24%. However, this level of risk is still significantly lower than the peak of 40% recorded by the BSC in 1995, representing 5.5 million fewer victims.
"This is better."

Photograph of a policeman inspecting some wall art

• Vandalism is the only BCS crime category to show a significant change compared with 2005/06, increasing by 10%. The amount of criminal damage recorded by the police showed no change. Longer term trends show that vandalism has fallen by 11% since 1995.
• Violent crime has remained stable according to the BCS in 2006/07 compared with the previous year. Recorded crime statistics show a 1% reduction in violence against the person (the first fall in eight years), a 7% fall in sexual offences but a 3% increase in robbery over the same period (thought this is still 16% below the 2001/02 peak in robbery). The number of police recorded offences involving firearms fell by 13% between 2005/06 and 2006/07 whilst the 755 recorded homicides was at its lowest level for eight years.
• About a half of the violent incidents recorded by the BCS and of violence against the person offences recorded by the police involved no injury to the victims. Young men, aged 16-24, were most at risk of being a victim of such crime.
• Domestic burglaries and vehicle-related thefts showed no significant changes between 2005/06 and 2006/07 according to the BCS. Police recorded burglary fell by 4% over the same period, comprising a 3% fall in domestic burglaries and a 4% fall in non-domestic burglaries. Offences against vehicles over the year as recorded by the police also fell by 4%.
• Total recorded drug offences increased by 9% in 2006/07 following an increase of 36% in the previous year. The increase was due to a large rise in the recording of possession of cannabis. BCS measurements suggest that overall use of any illicit drug by 16-59 year olds in 2006/07 (at 10.0%) is at its lowest level since 1996.
• APACS (the UK Payments Association) data show that in 2006, total losses from plastic card fraud on UK-issued cards were £428m, a decrease of 3% from 2005. According to the 2006/07 BCS, 4% of plastic card users had been a victim of card fraud in the last 12 months
• Worry about burglary, car crime and violent crime has fallen by about a third since 1998. However, despite the number of crimes estimated by the BCS falling over recent years, comparatively high proportions of people still believe the crime rate to have risen (particularly readers of the tabloid press). It also appears that people have more positive perceptions of crime in their own area than nationally.
• Only about 41% of BCS crimes were reported to the police in 2006/07. The public's reporting of crime to the police varies considerably by type of offence. Thefts of vehicles are most likely to be reported (93%), followed by burglaries in which something was stolen (81%). Reporting rates are relatively low (about 1 in 3) for crimes such as common assault, theft from the person and vandalism.

Lancashire

Crime has continued to fall in Lancashire. According to police recorded crime records there were more than 135,800 criminal offences in Lancashire in 2006/07 (Table 1). This represented 18.1% of the North West total or 2.5% of all recorded crimes in England and Wales (less those recorded by the British Transport Police whose records are not geographically based in terms of police force areas). This sub-regional total was equivalent to a rate of 94 offences per 1,000 resident population, a position that was much lower than rates in both Greater Manchester (131 per 1,000 population) and Merseyside (114) but higher than in the other two shire areas of Cheshire (90) or Cumbria (77). The Lancashire rate was six percentage points below that for England and Wales (100 per thousand population) and considerably lower than that of the wider North West Region (110 per thousand population).

Violence against the person, other theft and criminal damage were the main offence groups in Lancashire, accounting for nearly 70% of all recorded crimes. The rates (per 1,000 population) within most crime group offences were similar to or lower than the pattern experienced in England and Wales. The main exception was criminal damage in which the Lancashire rate of 26 offences per thousand was four percentage points higher than the national average. Overall, total recoded crime within the Lancashire sub-region fell by about 4% between 2005/06 and 2006/07 against a reduction of 2% in England and Wales. There were notable reductions in "violent crime" most especially in violence against the person offences and in fraud and forgery and criminal damage. Domestic burglary offences (not shown separately above) fell by 8%, though this was offset by an increase in non-domestic burglary offences.

Recorded crime data is also published for district authorities or "Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships". The availability of such data clearly indicates that crime is not evenly distributed across England and Wales and that geographic patterns and concentrations of offences also vary across crime types. The ten per cent of districts with the highest rate of recorded burglary, for example, account for 37% of all recorded burglaries in England and Wales. Geographic patterns and concentrations of offences vary across crime types. The BCS has found that the risk of being a victim of burglary, vehicle theft or violent crime was lower in rural areas than in urban areas: 2% of people in rural areas had been a victim of one or more violent crimes in 2006/07 compared with 4% of people in urban areas. Further, the BCS has indicated that people living in more deprived areas are more likely to be a victim of crime than those living in less deprived areas: 10% of households in the most employment-deprived areas had been a victim of vehicle thefts, compared with 7% of those in the least employment-deprived areas.

Similar considerations probably also apply in Lancashire where a very diverse pattern of recorded crime distribution is apparent between districts. This may be illustrated by means of the so-called recorded crime BCS comparator that endeavours to reconcile sub-sets of offences covered by both recorded police crime and the BCS (Table 2). The highest rates (all above the national average), rising to 94 offences per 1,000 population in Blackpool, are to be found in Lancashire's four largest urban districts. The same four districts are also within the top "most deprived" districts in England. Conversely, the lowest crime rates are to be found in Fylde and Ribble Valley, two relatively prosperous districts each ranked amongst the "least deprived" in England.

Map showing the number of crimes in seven key offence groups for Lancashire's local authorities - see text for details Source Home Office - Crime in England and Wales, 2006/07

Highest ranking Blackpool in the above table is especially characterised by the large number of recorded crimes of violence against the person, accounting for nearly a fifth of the sub-regional total (Table 3 and Figure 1). The district's rate for this offence at 36 per thousand population is nearly twice the England and Wales average and is in contrast to most other offences in the district which are close to or even below the national average. Burnley and Preston also exhibit relatively high rates of violence against the person. Theft from a motor vehicle is also a relatively large offence group in Lancashire but recorded incidences are especially high in Burnley and Preston and elsewhere across the sub-region are close to or below the national rate. Blackpool and Burnley are the only districts in which burglary offences are above the England and Wales average. Large swathes of Lancashire outside the larger urban districts have criminal offence rates across all key categories that are below, and often significantly below the national average.

Crime rates can, of course, also vary very considerably within individual districts themselves, being closely associated with such factors as levels of local deprivation, the nature of the housing stock and the number of transient visitors. For further information on such local community statistics, including crime, for Lancashire wards, go to (External) Lancashire Made Public .

For further details, please contact:
Peter Kivell
Tel 01772 534157
Email Peter.Kivell@lancashire.gov.uk

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