Crime over time in South Glamorgan

Recorded crime in South Glamorgan fell 13% between the year to July 2017 and the year to July 2026, from 59,282 to 51,841.

51,841 recorded crime, year to July 2026
−13% change between the year to July 2017 and the year to July 2026
6,174 in May 2020, the busiest month in this period

Month by month

12-month average Each month
2,0004,0006,0008,0000Covid lockdown4,320201720182019202020212022202320242025Jul 2026
Recorded crime each month in South Glamorgan, 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 24,431 August to December only
2017 60,564
2018 59,712 −1.4%
2019 59,143 −1.0%
2020 61,857 +4.6%
2021 58,573 −5.3%
2022 53,843 −8.1%
2023 57,724 +7.2%
2024 55,049 −4.6%
2025 52,124 −5.3%
2026 30,882 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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