Crime over time in East Devon

Recorded crime in East Devon rose 4.4% between the year to July 2017 and the year to July 2026, from 7,099 to 7,414.

7,414 recorded crime, year to July 2026
+4.4% change between the year to July 2017 and the year to July 2026
861 in July 2018, the busiest month in this period

Devon & Cornwall Police filed no usable return for November 2022 to June 2023. Those months are shaded, both lines break across them, and no comparison includes them.

Month by month

12-month average Each month
2505007501,0000Covid lockdown618201720182019202020212022202320242025Jul 2026
Recorded crime each month in East Devon, August 2016 to July 2026. The darker line is the average month across the twelve ending at each point, which takes the seasons out. Shaded months are ones the force filed no usable return for, so both lines break across them.

Year by year

Calendar years inside the period. A change is given only between two complete years, because a year missing months is not comparable with one that has them all.

Recorded crime by calendar year, August 2016 to July 2026
Year Recorded Change on the year before Note
2016 2,745 August to December only
2017 7,570
2018 8,104 +7.1%
2019 7,571 −6.6%
2020 7,113 −6.0%
2021 6,787 −4.6%
2022 5,734 2 months not filed
2023 2,844 6 months not filed
2024 7,987
2025 7,629 −4.5%
2026 4,399 January to July only

What a change in recorded crime does and does not mean

Everything here is crime the police recorded, which is not the same thing as crime that happened. Three things move recorded crime that have nothing to do with how much of it there is.

  • How carefully the police record. A 2014 inspection found forces failing to record around one crime in five reported to them. Recording was tightened in response, and recorded violence and public order offences climbed for years afterwards without the Crime Survey for England and Wales finding a rise to match.
  • How much the police go looking. Drug offences and possession of weapons are mostly found by officers searching people, so they follow the amount of searching as closely as the amount of offending.
  • How many people there are. These are counts, not rates. The population of England and Wales grew by about 6% between the 2011 and 2021 censuses, so a count that holds steady over that time is a rate that is slowly falling.

For long-run trends in the offences it covers, the Office for National Statistics treats the Crime Survey for England and Wales as the better guide. Recorded crime comes into its own for what the survey cannot do: rare offences, single months and individual places. How the figures on this site work.

All recorded crime is the same figure every other page on this site uses: every street-level record the police publish, which includes anti-social behaviour.

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