Rapes Soar 7% in Year to Highest Recorded Level

The number of sex offences reported to police has jumped to a record high of 214,816, official figures show. This includes 74,265 rapes, up 7% in a year and the highest number on record. The Mail has more.

There were 214,816 recorded sex crimes in the year to September, data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed, up 8% year-on-year.

It included the highest-ever number of recorded rapes, with 74,265 – a 7% rise.

The total number of sex crimes was equivalent to 588 incidents every day.

In 2003 the figure stood at less than 57,000 reported sex crimes, and the continuing rise in offences has been put down to improved recording practices by police forces.

The ONS said the latest increase was also partly down to two new sexual offences relating to “sending or sharing intimate photographs or films” which were brought in under the Online Safety Act in January 2024.

Cases of shoplifting reported to police climbed five per cent year-on-year to 519,381.

But they were slightly down on the slightly overlapping period to June 2025, previously published by the ONS, when the figure stood at 529,994.

The figures also revealed a growing drugs crimewave in England and Wales.

Drugs offences recorded by the police hit just over 225,200 in the year, up from 185,500. 

It was the highest level of recorded drug crime in 13 years.

The total included a 38% jump in drug trafficking offences to more than 75,000 – the highest level on record – and a 15% increase in drug possession offences, to almost 150,000.

Worth reading in full.

The homicide rate, on the other hand, has fallen to 499 – the lowest figure since 1983 – down from 535, driven by a drop in fatal stabbings to 174, down from 227. Remarkably, while in 2017 there were 2.51 killings for every 100,000 people aged under 25 in London, that figure was down 74% to 0.65 in 2025. Professor David Wilson, Emeritus Professor of Criminology at Birmingham University, attributed the drop to men “expressing masculinity in a way that they didn’t previously”:

In the past 10 years, violence reduction units have contributed to the fall. But it is also that more men are expressing masculinity in a way that they didn’t previously. A lot is tied up with the fact that they don’t feel they need to be violent to be masculine.

How that would explain the ongoing rise in rapes and weapons offences is unclear, however. The ONS suggests it’s more to do with medical advances meaning more assault victims are saved and people not going out drinking as much as they used to.