Comment by johnisgood | Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnisgood | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> You have not posted any data indicating otherwise.

False. I have. See below.

> The Crime Survey data shows that crime in London, and the rest of the UK, has generally decreased over the past ten years

Your own source contradicts your claim.

The latest ONS "Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2025" bulletin-the most recent data available shows headline crime rose to 9.4 million incidents, a 7% increase from the previous year (8.8 million). This is the opposite of the decrease you're claiming.

---

The crimes affecting daily safety have surged:

- Fraud: +31% (4.2 million incidents-highest since records began in 2017)

- Shoplifting: +20% (530,643 offences-highest since 2003)

- Theft from person: +15% (151,220 offences-also record highs)

---

You're conflating timeframes.

Yes, the 10-year trend shows overall decreases, but the ONS explicitly states there have been "increases across some crime types in the latest reporting period." The current trend shows London getting less safe, not more.

These aren't abstract statistics - fraud, shoplifting, and theft from the person are exactly the crimes that make London feel unsafe day-to-day. While homicides (-6%) fell slightly, that's a low-volume crime compared to millions of property offences hitting residents.

---

So... your own data source proves crime is rising in the categories that matter most for everyday safety.

---

PS. with regarding to:

> and then it turns out that you don't even live in London, people are going to wonder how you ended up holding such strong opinions on crime in London.

We have the internet. I can communicate with Londoners, visit regularly, read local London news sources, follow Metropolitan Police crime statistics, and so forth. The list is quite long.

By your logic, crime researchers, policy analysts, journalists, and statisticians could only study cities where they personally reside.

Your attempt to dismiss the data by questioning my location rather than addressing the statistics themselves suggests you're more interested in ad hominem attacks than substantive discussion.

The first part of your comment seems inconsistent. First you say that you have statistics to challenge my claim that crime in London has trended down overall in the past 10 years, but then you accept that "the 10-year trend shows overall decreases".

You'll find this note about the increase in 'headline crime' in 2025 vs 2024:

>the latest rise in CSEW headline crime was because of a 31% increase in fraud (to around 4.2 million incidents); this is the highest estimated number of incidents since fraud was first collected on the CSEW in YE March 2017

Surely you can't argue that fraud makes people feel unsafe when walking the streets. Fraud is a serious problem and the increase in fraud is concerning, but it's not a personal safety issue.

If you think about it, there are a lot of different categories of crime, numbers are bound to fluctuate, and so some of the categories will naturally show increases between one year and the next (just as others will show decreases). You can easily cherry pick one or two individual categories to paint whatever picture you want. I could equally point out that knife offenses, firearm offenses and robbery have gone down compared to 2024. Really, as many posters have pointed out, it makes more sense to look at longer-term trends rather than reading too much into year-on-year increases or decreases in specific crime categories.

The overall picture is that London is neither unusually safe nor unusually unsafe for a large European or American city. This has been the case for decades.

>I can communicate with Londoners

Well, can you? You're communicating with one now, but you seem quite determined to convince me not to believe either the official statistics or my own experiences.

Fair point on the framing inconsistency - I should have been clearer. The 10-year trend does show decreases, but we're now moving in the opposite direction.

Let's remove fraud entirely since you're right it doesn't affect street safety.

Theft from the person - which absolutely does - increased 15% to 151,220 offences (highest since records began).

Shoplifting hit 530,643 offences (also highest since records began). These are the crimes people encounter walking around London.

Since you're a Londoner, the Met data is key: London saw a 54% shoplifting increase vs 20% nationally, and 41% increase in theft from person while the rest of England saw it decrease by 14%. London isn't following national patterns - it's bucking them badly.

On cherry-picking: Homicides fell by 32 incidents across 9 million Londoners. Meanwhile, London alone saw over 30,000 additional shoplifting incidents. The volume difference matters.

The ONS explicitly states there have been "increases across some crime types in the latest reporting period." The current trajectory on street-level property crime is objectively concerning, regardless of longer-term trends.

Your personal experience is valid, but the data suggests it may not reflect what's happening across London more broadly. The statistics and your lived experience can both be true simultaneously.

---

Just to reiterate: these aren't abstract statistics - fraud, shoplifting, and theft from the person are exactly the crimes that make London feel unsafe day-to-day. Your own data source proves crime is rising in the categories that matter most for everyday safety.

If you remove fraud I don’t think you’ll get a year-on-year increase from 2024-2025, unless you cherry pick whatever offenses happen to have seen an increase over the past year, which is essentially meaningless. As I mentioned, there are other crimes relating to personal safety which have decreased from 2024-2025.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com