Crime over time in Scarborough

Recorded crime in Scarborough fell 5.1% between the year to June 2017 and the year to June 2026, from 14,287 to 13,559.

13,559 recorded crime, year to June 2026
−5.1% change between the year to June 2017 and the year to June 2026
1,577 in May 2020, the busiest month in this period

North Yorkshire Police has published nothing after June 2026, so this ends there rather than in July 2026.

Month by month

12-month average Each month
4008001,2001,6000Covid lockdown1,130201720182019202020212022202320242025Jun 2026
Recorded crime each month in Scarborough, July 2016 to June 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, July 2016 to June 2026
Year Recorded Change on the year before Note
2016 7,310 July to December only
2017 13,993
2018 14,662 +4.8%
2019 14,790 +0.9%
2020 15,254 +3.1%
2021 14,864 −2.6%
2022 13,843 −6.9%
2023 13,487 −2.6%
2024 12,219 −9.4%
2025 13,242 +8.4%
2026 6,683 January to June 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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