Violent Offending Stats

One of the most meaningless stats around is the overall crime rate. Why it is almost meaningless? Because it treats all crimes as equal? 1,000 murders counts the same as 1,000 arrests for cannabis use.

It allows decreases in one category to mask increases in another category. And some categories are very dependent on how proactive Police are, especially arounds drugs, road safety etc. Others are dependent on how likely people are to notify Police (sexual offences)

So I have long articulated that the most useful area to look at is violent offending. Partly because it includes very serious offences, and partly because it is the most likely to be reported. And here is the data from Police.

Now two minor things to note. The 2022 data is for the nine months to September and multiplied by 12/9 to allow comparison. And I have not had time to adjust it for population growth, but doing so would not change the clear impact which is violent crime levels were stable from 2015 to 2017, and have increased almost 40% since then.