Some chatter on social media would have you believe that crime is out of control.
The facts tell a different story.
As @frasernelson has shown in his Substack today:
Violence is at its lowest level since the crime survey began in 1981.
Robbery is at a record low.
Crime, excluding fraud, is 78% down on its peak in 1995.
And the stats show this Government is delivering on its promises too:
Knife crime is down 11%.
Knife murders are at their lowest level in 35 years.
Thefts including phone snatching have fallen by 20% in the last year alone.
But I know there is more that we must do, and we will:
We’ve put more than 3,800 extra neighbourhood officers into roles, with named, contactable officers for every neighbourhood.
We’re introducing the most significant reforms to policing in a generation.
We are tackling rising rates of violence against women and girls through our landmark strategy.
And we are tackling crimes like fraud, more prevalent in our increasingly online world, with £250 million directed to this challenge in our Fraud Strategy published this year.
Oct 22, 2026 · 4:18 PM UTC
This is a masterclass in cherry-picking statistics.
Yes, violence and knife crime have fallen, which is obviously welcome.
But your post gives people a completely distorted picture of crime in Britain.
The ONS says there were still an estimated 9.6 MILLION headline crimes in the year to March 2026, statistically unchanged from 9.4 million the previous year.
That included 4.5 MILLION fraud offences, with the number of fraud victims actually rising 10% to 3.8 million.
So when you boast that crime is “78% down”, you are comparing particular traditional crimes with their extraordinary 1995 peak. Fraud and computer misuse were not even included in that historical series.
Only around 36% of the traditional crimes measured by the Crime Survey are reported to police at all.
And the Crime Survey itself does not cover everything. It surveys people aged 16+ living in households, so it does not capture crimes against businesses, people living in prisons, care homes or student halls, or offences such as drug possession.
Anti-social behaviour has gone the opposite way. 40.9% of adults said they had experienced or witnessed it, up from 35.5%. The ONS says a questionnaire change inflated part of that increase, but that some of the rise was genuine.
Theft from outside homes rose 21%, to around 791,000 incidents.
Police still recorded 507,086 shoplifting offences in a single year, even after a 4% fall from the previous year.
Then look at what actually happens when victims report crimes.
Only 7.3% of victim-based crimes recorded in the year to March 2026 resulted in a charge or summons at the point measured.
40.9% were closed because no suspect was identified.
For theft, that rises to 69.4%.
For residential burglary, 72.4% ended with no suspect identified.
For vehicle crime, it was 83.2%.
The charge rate for home burglary was just 5.9%.
And rape cases which did eventually result in a charge took a median 438 days.
There is another enormous change rarely mentioned in these comparisons: our behaviour has changed.
London residents now make about 9% fewer trips per person than before Covid. Total journey stages in London remain 5.7% below 2019.
Less commuting, less travelling and fewer journeys mean fewer opportunities for some forms of street crime. That does not prove how much of the fall it explains, but pretending society is otherwise identical to 1995 is absurd.
London's population also fell 0.29% in the latest year because more people left London for other parts of Britain than moved in from elsewhere in the UK.
And perhaps the most misleading part of your post is taking credit for the long-term fall in violence.
ONS data shows violence peaked in 1995. It fell dramatically long before this Government existed, including a 43% fall between 1995 and 2002 alone.
So yes, celebrate falling homicide and knife crime. The ONS recorded 499 homicides, down 7%, knife-enabled crime down 8% and knife homicides down 14%.
Those are genuinely good figures.
But don't take a 30-year decline spanning Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak, arrive during the final couple of years, and present it as proof that your Government has suddenly made Britain safe.
Crime has changed.
Where it happens has changed.
What people report has changed.
How police record it has changed.
How much people travel has changed.
And huge categories such as fraud barely existed in the statistics being used for your 1995 comparison.
That is the context your post conveniently leaves out.
How about the ‘rape gangs’
Don’t remember them being around when I was growing up !!
Been going on for the last 30 years and you voted against the forthcoming National Inquiry until we @Conservatives forced your hand !
Hold on, Shabana, you're telling the British public that violence is at its lowest level since 1981 but there's something you're conveniently leaving out.
The headline violence figures you're quoting don't include murder, rape, sexual assault, stalking or harassment in that same measure.
So when you tell everyone that violence is at historic lows, you're not talking about violence as a whole, you're talking about a specific category of crime.
And how many people reading your post would know that?
If you're going to reassure the British public about crime, tell them exactly what's being counted, what's being left out and what's happening in those other categories.
Because there's a big fucking difference between crime statistics improving and the public being told everything is fine.
You're being rather selective with the figures, Shabana.
The ONS figures released today show fraud up 11%, computer misuse up 23% and other household theft up 27%.
There were an estimated 9.7 million crimes, with no statistically significant fall from the previous year.
And pointing to a decline in crime dating back to 1995 doesn't establish that your government is responsible for bringing crime down.
Stop treating the public like idiots.
I love grok nitter.cf/TheGNPE/status/2113322…
Hey @grok are rape and sexual offences and domestic abuse up in the UK if so how much by and is her reporting selective?
Very selective with this arnt you so much that you missed out the important ones
nitter.cf/grok/status/2113322228…
Yes, per latest ONS data:
Domestic abuse (CSEW, year to March 2026): 9.6% of adults (~4.7m) experienced it, up from 7.8% (~3.8m) the prior year. Driven by partner abuse rising to 7.9% from 6.1%.
Sexual offences (police recorded, year to June 2026): up 4% to 218,994. Rape up 2% to 74,484.
CSEW sexual victimisation is 2.1% (~1m), but uses new questions so not comparable.
Her post selects long-term CSEW falls in violence/robbery/overall crime (excl. fraud; headline CSEW omits sexual/DA) and some knife/theft drops, while these categories rose. She notes rising VAWG rates separately.
“Some chatter on social media would have you believe that crime is out of control. The facts tell a different story.”
No.
The facts tell a MUCH bigger story than the handful you've chosen to present.
That's the problem.
You pick the statistic.
You pick the definition.
You pick the baseline.
You pick what is included.
You pick what is excluded.
Then you tell the public:
“Trust the data.”
Let's actually look at your claims.
You say violence is at its lowest level since the Crime Survey began.
Fine. Say what it actually is:
THE CRIME SURVEY.
It is a survey estimate of people living in households. It is not a census of every crime committed in Britain.
ONS itself says only around 36% of the headline crimes covered by the survey — excluding fraud and computer misuse — were reported to the police in the year to March 2026.
Then:
“Robbery is at a record low.”
Which robbery measure?
Because ONS specifically says POLICE DATA are its preferred measure of robbery because the Crime Survey finds relatively few robbery victims and its estimates can fluctuate.
And what did the police data show?
Personal robbery fell.
Good.
But overall recorded robbery rose by around 10%.
That's rather different from simply tweeting:
“Robbery is at a record low.”
Then comes my favourite:
“Crime, excluding fraud, is 78% down from its 1995 peak.”
EXCLUDING FRAUD.
You literally put the exclusion in the sentence and then use it to tell people how wonderfully crime is falling.
Why exclude one of the biggest crime categories in modern Britain when you're making a sweeping statement about crime?
The latest full ONS figures before today's release estimated around:
9.6 MILLION headline Crime Survey offences.
Including approximately:
4.5 MILLION incidents of fraud.
And fraud wasn't statistically falling — the number of fraud victims had actually risen.
So “crime excluding fraud” is doing a fucking enormous amount of work in that sentence.
Then:
“Knife crime is down 11%.”
Again — which definition?
Because the Government's own knife-crime strategy explicitly EXCLUDES knife possession from its headline measure.
Why?
The Government says possession figures are more affected by policing activity.
Fine.
But perhaps mention what that excluded data says as well.
Police recorded 30,216 offences of possessing an article with a blade or point in the year to June 2026 — reported as the highest level in that series.
That doesn't cancel out the fall in knife-enabled offences.
Both things can be true.
THAT IS THE POINT.
Show us both.
Then:
“Thefts including phone snatching have fallen by 20%.”
Again, good.
But shall we continue reading the tables?
Police still recorded 519,516 shoplifting offences in the year to June 2026.
Yes, that was down around 2% on the previous year.
Say that too.
But don't select “phone snatching down 20%” and pretend you've just described theft across Britain.
And your “3,800 extra neighbourhood officers”?
Your own Government describes that figure as more than 3,800 OFFICERS AND PCSOs being put into neighbourhood policing roles.
That's not quite the same sentence as giving the impression you've simply recruited 3,800 extra police officers.
Words matter.
Definitions matter.
And apparently they matter a great deal when politicians are choosing which ones to put in a tweet.
Then we get:
“We're tackling fraud with £250 million.”
Lovely.
Spending £250 million is an INPUT.
It isn't an outcome.
How much fraud occurred?
How many victims?
How much was lost?
How much was recovered?
How many offenders were identified?
How many were prosecuted?
THAT tells me whether it worked.
This is why people don't trust you.
And it isn't because they are too stupid to understand statistics or because they've been poisoned by “social media chatter”.
People have watched governments do this for years.
Change the dataset.
Change the methodology.
Change the terminology.
Change the counting rules.
Reclassify things.
Put things under “unknown”.
Put things under “not currently recorded”.
Revise the figures later.
Say two datasets aren't directly comparable.
Then produce whichever percentage makes the press release look best.
And the Government's own statistical guidance openly acknowledges that these things happen.
Home Office immigration data, for example, explicitly contains “unknown” and “not currently recorded” categories.
Its statistics are produced from live administrative systems and can subsequently be revised because of late cases, changes to cases, data cleansing and changes in categorisation.
The Home Office even says that after moving from the old CID caseworking system to Atlas, some statistical categorisations were no longer available and methodologies had to be changed.
And the Home Office has said it does not publish statistics on some subjects when it considers the information it holds isn't good enough to support public debate.
Think about that sentence.
THE STATE HOLDS INFORMATION.
THE STATE DECIDES THE QUALITY ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH.
SO THE PUBLIC DOESN'T GET A STATISTIC.
Meanwhile an Independent Chief Inspector examining asylum casework reported in 2026 that decision quality had declined significantly and reached an “unacceptable level”.
So spare me:
“The facts tell a different story.”
Give us ALL THE FACTS.
Give us the favourable data.
Give us the uncomfortable data.
Give us the excluded categories.
Give us the unknowns.
Give us the methodology changes.
Give us the revisions.
Give us the recording-rule changes.
Give us the raw tables.
Give us the money.
Give us the outcomes.
And when a dataset isn't good enough to publish, tell us exactly WHAT isn't good enough and WHY.
Then we can decide what story the data tells.
Because you don't get to curate the evidence and then lecture the public about misinformation.
Labour doesn't get that privilege.
The Conservatives didn't deserve it either.
I don't want your fucking narrative.
I want the ledger.
How reassuring, Home Secretary. Everyone else produces “chatter”; you produce “facts”. Presumably the distinction depends on whether the numbers flatter you.
A decline stretching back to 1995 makes a splendid backdrop for celebrating this Government. Thirty-one years of history, neatly squeezed into a Labour victory lap. Have you considered claiming credit for the invention of street lighting?
Then there’s “thefts” falling 20%. That figure concerns police-recorded theft from the person. Total recorded theft fell 5%. Quite a useful distinction to misplace while lecturing everyone else about accuracy.
“Robbery at a record low”? The ONS explicitly prefers police data for robbery because the survey estimate is volatile, with few victims in its sample. It found no statistically significant annual survey change. Apparently the methodological notes weren’t invited to the celebration.
And where are the figures for rape and sexual assault in this statistical victory parade?
Police in England and Wales recorded 218,994 sexual offences in the year to June 2026, up 4%, including 74,484 rape offences, up 2%. Reporting and recording changes affect those comparisons, but these figures still deserve rather more attention than a “landmark strategy” waved from the ministerial balcony.
Your headline survey measure of violence doesn’t provide a comprehensive account of sexual offending. Sexual victimisation is measured separately. Quite an important detail when inviting everyone to relax.
Perhaps explain how you’re preventing these crimes, getting cases investigated and securing justice. “We’ve published a strategy” must be a tremendous comfort to a minister. Its usefulness to a victim requires rather more demonstration.
But do carry on explaining that everyone else is merely producing “chatter”. Apparently public anxiety becomes terribly unsophisticated when it interrupts a government press release.
Meanwhile, the same survey puts fraud up 11%, other household theft up 27% and computer misuse up 23% in the year to June 2026. Overall headline crime showed no statistically significant annual change.
Fraud, conveniently, gets a spending announcement in your post instead of its percentage increase. Marvellous editorial judgement.
And those 3,800 extra neighbourhood personnel? Mainly redeployment, while overall police officer strength fell by 566 full-time equivalents between March 2025 and March 2026. Which teams supplied them, and how was their previous work covered?
Before dismissing public concern as “chatter”, perhaps try giving the public the context.
The facts do tell a story, Home Secretary. You appear to have developed a remarkable talent for skipping paragraphs.
Yours, having inconveniently read the footnotes,
A Gentleman from the Old School. 🎩
I’ve never seen a police officer in my neighbourhood in 5 years.
Anyone seen all these “extra” police officers?
I thought arriving across a border undocumented was a crime?
How many foreign criminals have you allowed into Britain?
How many women have been Raped by undocumented men who you allowed into Britain?
@ShabanaMahmood , if crime is under control can you please explain why 🇬🇧 has one of highest rape stats in the world? And surprise surprise it has increased 400% in last 20 years or so. What could possibly be the reason. 🤔
The UK has the highest recorded acid attacks in the world.
In Europe, the closest country to the UK’s 710 attacks, was France with 10, then Germany 5, Belgium 5, Italy 4 and Sweden 3 — and you think don’t think violent crime is out of control?
The UK also has the highest rapes recorded in Europe — do you think that is not out of control either Home Secretary? The women in this country should be demanding you take responsibility and immediate action to address this.
Britain has never been more dangerous than today, and for the Home Secretary to flippantly post about people exaggerating about violent crime, is totally unacceptable on your behalf.
It would be easy to list statistic after statistic about how the UK tops violent crime, but with respect, I believe it would be lost on the Home Office and this Labour Government.
There is an old saying Home Secretary; “If you don’t see the problem—maybe you are the problem”.
