You asked
In an online discussion about law and order, someone quoted figures from yourself, including that 80% plus of rapes are not reported. My question is if these crimes are not reported, how can you give such an exact percentage?
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We said
Thank you for your request in relation to information on the reporting rate of rapes.
The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) asks people about their experiences of a range of crimes irrespective of whether they reported them to the police. More information on the survey is available in the User Guide to crime statistics for England and Wales.
The CSEW collects information on sexual assaults via self-completion modules asked of all adult respondents aged 16 to 59 years.
It also collects information from respondents about whether they reported rape or assault by penetration incidents (including attempts) to the police.
The CSEW is considered to be an accurate measure of victimisation. Analysis shows that people are more at ease because of increased confidence in the privacy and confidentiality of the survey and so are more prepared to provide data on whether they have been victims of assault. More details are provided in Annex 1 of the User guide to domestic abuse prevalence measures.
The latest available figures on the reporting rate of rape or assault by penetration to the police can be found in Table 23 of the 'Sexual offending: Crime Survey for England and Wales appendix tables'. These data tables were released alongside our 'Sexual offending: victimisation and path through the criminal justice system' publication in December 2018.
Estimates provided for the period year ending March 2014 to year ending March 2017 combined indicated that 83 percent of people did not report their experience to the police.
If you have any crime-related queried in the future, you can email CrimeStatistics@ons.gov.uk and we will endeavour to help.