Crime drops by 8% during year of lockdowns, says ONS

Crime recorded by police in England and Wales fell by 8% in 2020 as periods of lockdown caused theft reports to drop by more than a quarter, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.

Firearms offences fell by 11% and knife crime dropped by 9%.

Domestic abuse reports increased, however, along with fraud based on online shopping.

The ONS said the "majority" of the fluctuation in crime rates during the year was due to periods of lockdown.

The annual reduction in crime was mostly driven by "substantial falls" between April and June when the first lockdown took place.

Crime increased again from July to September as restrictions were eased and fell again as further lockdown measures were imposed in the final months of the year.

The ONS said the closure of non-essential shops and people spending more time in their homes was the likely cause of the 26% fall in thefts - including a 42% drop in thefts from the person, 29% reduction in shoplifting and 24% fall in burglary.

The decrease in knife crime was mostly driven by a 29% fall in robbery using a knife.

Homicides fell by 12% in 2020, although the decline was exaggerated by the 2019 incident when 39 Vietnamese people were found dead in Essex after they were trafficked into the UK.

Excluding that, the fall in homicides - which covers all deaths caused by another person - was 6%, with 625 offences in the year.

Amid concerns about the impact of lockdown on the victims of domestic violence, the number of domestic abuse offences increased by 7% to 839,077.

Sexual offences recorded by police fell by 7% in 2020 compared with the previous year, while rape offences dropped by 6% to 55,632.

The ONS said that before the fall recorded during this pandemic year, rape offences reported to police had been gradually increasing each year.

Improvements in the way police record rape offences have contributed to increases in previous years, and the ONS said that may be having a diminishing effect now.

But they said national lockdown restrictions may also have had some impact on the fall last year.

Over the past nine months, about half of adults in an ONS survey said they had noticed others breaking coronavirus restrictions, and 7% of them reported the breach to police.

Of those who did not report it, most of them said the incident was too trivial or not worth reporting.

Coronavirus restrictions also changed patterns of fraud, the ONS suggested, with a 38% increase in fraud related to online shopping and auctions, while ticketing fraud plummeted by 68% as music gigs and festivals across the country were cancelled.

Drug offences rose by 15% over the last year. The ONS said it was driven by a police crackdown in "crime hotspots" from April to June 2020.

The Metropolitan Police in London was among the forces which ran more proactive drug operations targeting dealers and suppliers as they struggled to move around freely in lockdown.