Police force crime rates compared
How England and Wales’ largest police force areas compare on recorded crime per 1,000 people — built the same way as our city posts, one verified force at a time.
How to read this table
Every row below is sourced individually and dated individually, because different forces and different analysts publish on different schedules — we would rather show you exactly where each number comes from than force everything into one artificial snapshot. Two rows (Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire) come from official ONS police-recorded-crime figures for 2025/26, verified directly and already used in our Manchester post. The rest come from CrimeRate’s independent analysis of police-recorded data for the 12 months to April 2026, the same source already cited in our Birmingham post. We are adding more forces over time as we can verify them properly — this is not yet all 43 forces in England and Wales, and it does not include Police Scotland or the PSNI, neither of which publishes through the data.police.uk feed our tools rely on.
Ranked, lowest to highest
Crimes recorded per 1,000 people in the force area, most recent verified period. Where we have written a full city post using this force’s live data, it’s linked underneath.
Why a force-wide number is a starting point, not a verdict
A single rate for an entire force area covers everywhere from a city centre to a quiet market town, so it tells you about the force area as a whole, not about any one street in it — the same point our city posts make about London, Manchester and Birmingham. South Wales Police sits lowest here largely because its area includes a lot of rural Wales alongside Cardiff; the Metropolitan Police area is almost entirely dense urban footprint, which structurally pushes its rate up compared with a force covering more countryside. Use this table to see how forces compare broadly, then use the address checker for a real twelve-month figure at one specific postcode, which is the only way to see what a rate actually looks like where you live.
What “crimes per 1,000 people” leaves out
This is recorded crime — what was reported to police and logged, not everything that happened — and it says nothing about how serious those incidents were. A force with a high volume of low-level anti-social behaviour reports can rank above a force with fewer but more serious incidents. For the full picture of what police-recorded data can and cannot tell you, see where our crime data comes from. And as always: none of this replaces calling 999 in an emergency.
Want the number for your own street, not just your force?