Crime over time in Dudley

Recorded crime in Dudley rose 3.5% between the year to July 2017 and the year to July 2026, from 25,605 to 26,511.

26,511 recorded crime, year to July 2026
+3.5% change between the year to July 2017 and the year to July 2026
3,065 in November 2021, the busiest month in this period

Month by month

12-month average Each month
8001,6002,4003,2000Covid lockdown2,209201720182019202020212022202320242025Jul 2026
Recorded crime each month in Dudley, 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 10,255 August to December only
2017 26,757
2018 27,349 +2.2%
2019 26,593 −2.8%
2020 28,563 +7.4%
2021 33,531 +17.4%
2022 32,699 −2.5%
2023 30,757 −5.9%
2024 28,010 −8.9%
2025 27,048 −3.4%
2026 15,830 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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