Crime over time in Norwich

Recorded crime in Norwich fell 17% between the year to July 2017 and the year to July 2026, from 22,056 to 18,420.

18,420 recorded crime, year to July 2026
−17% change between the year to July 2017 and the year to July 2026
2,025 in March 2019, the busiest month in this period

Month by month

12-month average Each month
6001,2001,8002,4000Covid lockdown1,535201720182019202020212022202320242025Jul 2026
Recorded crime each month in Norwich, August 2016 to July 2026. The darker line is the average month across the twelve ending at each point, which takes the seasons out.

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 9,145 August to December only
2017 22,277
2018 21,618 −3.0%
2019 20,859 −3.5%
2020 21,857 +4.8%
2021 20,814 −4.8%
2022 21,434 +3.0%
2023 19,576 −8.7%
2024 19,237 −1.7%
2025 18,624 −3.2%
2026 10,588 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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