Violent Crime: year ending December 2017

Assault with injury and assault with intent to cause serious harm
Offences include injury resulting in permanent disability; more than minor permanent disfigurement; broken bones; fractured skull; compound fractures; substantial loss of blood; internal injury; lengthy treatment or serious psychiatric injury (based on expert evidence); and shock (when accompanied by expert psychological evidence).

Assault without injury
Offences where no more than a feeling of touch or passing moment of pain is experienced by the victim.

Harassment offences
Incidents where no other substantive notifiable offence exists, but when looked at as a course of conduct are likely to cause fear, alarm or distress.

Threats to kill
Where an individual fears that the offender’s threat is real and may be carried out.

Violent crime
Covers a range of offence types from minor assaults, such as pushing and shoving that result in no physical harm, to murder. This includes offences where the victim was intentionally stabbed, punched, kicked, pushed or jostled, as well as offences where the victim was threatened with violence whether or not there is any injury.

In published crime statistics, violent crime – both as measured by the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and by police recorded crime – is grouped into two broad, high-level categories: “violence with injury” and “violence without injury”.

A comprehensive guide to crime types and definitions can be found in the User Guide to Crime Statistics for England and Wales.

This page is part of our quarterly crime collection, which relies on two main sources of data.

Crime Survey of England and Wales
The Crime Survey of England and Wales (CSEW) is a survey which asks people whether they have been victims of a crime over the past 12 months.

Police recorded crime
Crime that has been reported to the police, and recorded as part of police casework.

Police recorded crime data are not designated as National Statistics.

More information on both these sources can be found in the User guide to crime statistics for England and Wales.

More information on the methodology can be found in the Crime in England and Wales Quality and Methodology Information report.

Strengths and limitations of the data
The Crime Survey of England and Wales (CSEW) has been consistent since 1981 and is the best source to use when looking at trends over time. It is also a better measurement of crimes which are less likely to be reported to the police, such as sexual offences.

Police recorded crime is a good measure for understanding how much work police forces are carrying out. It can be affected by changes in policing practices and victims’ willingness to report crime.

Police recorded crime is not a useful way to monitor crime trends, and we do not recommend using it for this. Police recorded crime data are not designated as National Statistics.

Time periods covered
The Crime Survey for England and Wales data on this page are based on interviews conducted between January 2017 and December 2017, measuring peoples’ experiences of crime in the 12 months before the interview.

The police recorded crime figures relate to crimes recorded by the police during the year ending December 2017 (between January 2017 and December 2017).

“Latest year” (or “latest survey year”) refers to the (survey) year ending December 2017.
“Previous year” (or “previous survey year”) refers to the (survey) year ending December 2016.