Chart: Police are arresting half as many people as a decade ago
A combination of legal changes and decreases in many common types of crime, together with closures of custody suites due to budget cuts, mean police are making about 760,000 fewer arrests per year now, compared to a decade ago. The number of children arrested has decreased fastest, potentially driven by recognition of the negative consequences of criminalising young people.
larger image | annotated R code to produce this chart
Data source: Home Office, 2018
Matt Ashby
Lecturer in Crime Science
I am a lecturer in crime science at the Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science at University College London (UCL). I am interested in crime analysis – particularly how crime concentrates in time and space – in crime prevention and in transport crime.