FOI reference: FOI-2026-3460
You asked
Could you please explain why the UK authorities don't hold data on crime stats based on sex, race, ethnicity and class?
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 and about their experiences and perceptions of anti-social behaviour and the criminal justice system. PRC data is provided to ONS 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.
From the CSEW, we produce crime estimates broken down by the personal and household demographics of survey respondents (the victims). These include, but are not limited to, age, sex, ethnicity and marital status. While we do not have a disaggregation for class, we provide data disaggregation that may be relevant, such as, indices of deprivation, household income, employment status and occupation. CSEW crime statistics broken down by these personal and household characteristics can be found in our annual supplementary tables. CSEW headline crime includes theft, robbery, criminal damage, fraud, computer misuse, and violence with or without injury. For more information on our data classifications and disaggregation, please see Section 7 of our User Guide. ONS' data classification harmonised standards may also be useful.
Although PRC data is provided to us in aggregated form by the Home Office, we do present some breakdowns of offences by victim characteristics. Our Homicide in England and Wales releases provide information on both victim and perpetrator's sex, age and ethnicity based on data from the Home Office Homicide Index. The Home Office also provide breakdowns of some violence against the person offences by sex and age in our The nature of violent crime: appendix tables, our Domestic abuse prevalence and victim characteristics tables and our Sexual offences prevalence and victim characteristics, England and Wales tables.
For more information on PRC data, please contact the Home Office at CrimeandPoliceStats@homeoffice.gov.uk. For information on courts and sentencing, please contact the Ministry of Justice at CJS_Statistics@justice.gov.uk.