Sex Crimes In Britain At Its Highest In Years

100,000 sex offences were recorded in the last year

Sex crimes have reached the highest level since records began, figures from the Office for National Statistics show.

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The number of rapes and other sex offences reported to police has increased by 36% in the last year - hitting nearly 100,000 in total over the 12 months.

Sex offences against children contributed to 44% of the increase and the ONS report suggests this is in part due to the high-profile child sex abuse inquiry.

Rapes alone saw a 39% increase in just 12 months (33,431 rapes were recorded by police in England and Wales) while the rate of sex attacks increased from one in every 1,000 people to two in every 1,000 people.

Police also recorded 66,178 sex offences. It is the highest number of sex offences recorded since the current reporting method was started in 2003.

The ONS report also attributes the increase to improvements in recording by police, an increase in the willingness of victims to come forward and the so-called "Savile effect" - a number of victims coming forward to report historical sex crimes.

Although, it makes clear that most of the offences are not historical but current.

It said: "It is thought rises in police recorded sexual offences are likely to be due to an improvement in recording by the police and an increase in the willingness of victims to come forward and report to the police.

"Previous increases in the number of sexual offences reported to the police were shown to have been related in part to a rise in the reporting of historical offences following 'Operation Yewtree', which began in 2012.

"Analysis of records from the Home Office Data Hub indicates that both current and historical offences continued to rise in the year ending September 2015 compared with the previous year.

"However, the major volume contribution to this increase comes from current offences."

Police also recorded the first rise in gun crimes since 2008 - they went up by 4%. Knife crime increased by 9%.

Overall crime figures increased by 6% to 4.3m offences.

Jack Dromey, Labour's shadow police minister, said: "The Tories have slashed police officers by 17,000 and broke their promise to the public to protect frontline officer numbers. Now we see the biggest increase in recorded crime in a decade."

Police Minister Mike Penning said: "We continue to see a rise in police recording of violent and sexual crimes. The Office for National Statistics is clear that this rise reflects improvements in recording practice and a willingness of victims to come forward - this is something we welcome.

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"We are also providing much greater transparency on what happens to crimes once they have been reported to the police.

"The Government has made reducing violence, including knife crime, a priority and continues to work closely with the police and other organisations to tackle the drivers of these crimes."

Credit: Sky