Crime over time in Tyne and Wear

Recorded crime in Tyne and Wear fell 26% between the year to July 2017 and the year to July 2026, from 163,910 to 121,677.

121,677 recorded crime, year to July 2026
−26% change between the year to July 2017 and the year to July 2026
16,735 in May 2018, the busiest month in this period

Month by month

12-month average Each month
5,00010,00015,00020,0000Covid lockdown10,140201720182019202020212022202320242025Jul 2026
Recorded crime each month in Tyne and Wear, 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 65,381 August to December only
2017 175,231
2018 181,910 +3.8%
2019 166,773 −8.3%
2020 166,189 −0.4%
2021 156,781 −5.7%
2022 153,228 −2.3%
2023 159,551 +4.1%
2024 148,177 −7.1%
2025 139,936 −5.6%
2026 62,768 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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