The victim-based latest Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimates 7.1 million incidents of crime against households and residents for the year ending June 2014. This represents a 16% decrease compared with 2013 and is the lowest crime estimate since the survey began in 1981. Decreases were evident for all major crime types: violence saw a 23% fall, criminal damage fell by 20%, and theft offences decreased by 12%.
If crime is really falling, then why is this happening? Increasing numbers of police officers between 2005 and 2010 is one theory, while a recent Home Office study points elsewhere: to a fall in the crimes once committed by the large number of drug addicts that existed in the UK in the 1980s and 1990s (Morgan 2014).
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