Crime levels soar as millions of cyber crimes included for first time

The Office for National Statistics has published an estimate of fraud for the first time – based on its Crime Survey.

The ONS research on cyber crime has been published for the first time following widespread criticism that large chunks of crime such as identity theft, computer hacking, card fraud and “phishing” were absent from official totals.

According to ONS, the most regular form of cyber crime to fall under the Computer Misuse Act was attacks by malware.

The Crime Survey for England and Wales showed an estimated 6.5 million incidents of crime against households and resident adults (aged 16 and over) – an eight per cent decrease on the previous year’s survey.

“While the figures released today may appear high, I am certain that cyber crime remains one of the most under reported areas in our crime statistics”, said Louise Pordage, senior manager in KPMG’s cyber security practice.

‘The profile of cases covered by the CSEW cover the full spectrum of harm or loss. Almost 600,000 offences were referred to NFIB, including 237,494 offences reported by victims to Action Fraud (the UK’s national fraud reporting centre), 266,701 referrals from Cifas (a UK-wide fraud prevention service) and 95,489 cases from FFA United Kingdom (that represents the United Kingdom payments industry).

The addition of the 5.1m online fraud offences to the crime survey figure of 6.5 million offences leads to a headline figure of 11.6m estimated criminal incidents compared with the 6.8m estimate for the year to June 2014.

“It is important to recognise that these new data are not simply uncovering new crimes, but finding better ways of capturing existing crime that has not been measured well in the past”, the ONS said in a statement.

Without the inclusion of cybercrime, the general crime rate would be down 8%, the ONS stats showed.

Meanwhile, the number of sexual offences recorded by police in England and Wales have increased by 41 per cent in the past year.

“Although we estimate that there were more than seven million fraud and computer misuse incidents in the past year, this does not necessarily imply a recent rise in crime as the new measures bring into scope a large volume of offences not previously included in the Crime Survey for England and Wales”.

Crime Minister Mike Penning insisted crime rates are continually dropping because of police reforms.

Statisticians say the rise reflects a change in police attitudes in the last 12 months with officers now talking about “reports of rape” and no longer referring to “allegations of rape”.

This rise could reflect a more proactive police response to knife crime, as new laws mean anyone caught possessing a knife for a second time will face a mandatory minimum sentence in prison.

“This is not a new threat and the Government has been working to get ahead of the game”.

The Crime Survey suggests a 25% increase in violence, with murders at their highest level for four years.