FOI reference: FOI-2026-3671
You asked
In the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) hate crime publication, hate crime is categorised as either household or personal crimes. Under personal crime, there are the following incidents:
- personal crime excluding fraud and computer misuse
- violence without injury
- violence with injury
- robbery
- theft from person
- other theft of personal property
Please can you provide a breakdown of what offences fall under "violence without injury" and "violence with injury"?
We said
Thank you for your request.
We are responsible for publishing crime statistics for England and Wales from two data sources: the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and police recorded crime (PRC).
The CSEW is a victimisation survey and asks sampled respondents about their experiences of crime within the 12 months prior to interview. PRC data is provided to us by the Home Office in aggregate form. It consists of counts of all "notifiable" crimes that are reported to and recorded by the police in England and Wales.
In the CSEW, violence is derived from a set of offence codes comprising:
- serious wounding (where the skin has been broken or a bone broken, which needs medical attention; the wounding must be intentional)
- other wounding (where the offender inflicts severe injuries unintentionally or injuries such as cuts and bruises have been inflicted)
- common assault (where there has been no injury or negligible injury; this includes, but is not limited to, being punched, slapped, kicked, pushed and spat on)
- attempted assault
- serious wounding with a sexual motive
- other wounding with a sexual motive
These offences are subsequently grouped into either "violence with injury" or "violence without injury", according to the outcome of the incident.
The main difference that distinguishes the two is whether a respondent has been injured in any way. If a respondent has been injured, they will be categorised as being a victim of violence with injury, and if there has been no injury, they will be categorised as being a victim of violence without injury.
Police-recorded definitions of violence with or without injury are not directly comparable with CSEW definitions. Police-recorded crime include offences such as attempted murder, intentional destruction of viable unborn child, and endangering life, which are not included in the CSEW.
More information is available in our User guide to crime statistics for England and Wales: March 2026.
If you have any queries in the future, please contact crimestatistics@ons.gov.uk, and we will try to help.