Police forces in England and Wales make 75,000 fewer arrests

Police arrested 75,000 fewer people in England and Wales than the previous year, despite a rise in recorded crime.

Across the 43 forces there was a 7% average drop in arrests. Sussex recorded the biggest fall in 2014-15 compared with the previous year, 26%.

Home Office figures show fewer people arrested almost everywhere, which the Police Federation warned may be down to cuts to force budgets.

The biggest drop was in Sussex, where crime rose by 8% over a similar period.

Across England and Wales, police forces made 949,526 arrests in total.

That is equivalent to 17 in every 1,000 people. The previous year the total figure for arrests was 1,024,969.

The government data shows 801,898 arrests were of males and 147,628 of females.

Total recorded crime in England and Wales increased by 5% in 2014-15 compared with the year before, 4.3 million offences in total.

However, the Office for National Statistics said a large part of the rise was believed to be "due to improved compliance with national recording standards by police forces in the last year".

In Sussex there were 91,438 recorded crimes, excluding fraud, in the year to the end of June 2015, a rise of 8%, despite the force recording the biggest percentage fall in arrests (26%).

In other areas:

A spokesman for Sussex Police said its 26% drop in overall arrests was down to changes in the way data was recorded, with the Home Office not requiring the same amount of information that the force previously would have supplied.

The Home Office said it was for individual forces to comment on their figures but the overall statistics were a "continuation of a longer-term downward trend".

Steve White, chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, said: "It would be dangerous for anyone to look at the drop in arrest numbers and conclude there is less crime.

"Officers work very hard to ensure public protection from crime. However, the cuts the forces have faced in previous years have put a serious strain on resources, meaning there are fewer officers available to respond to incidents.

"It is hard to be specific about the exact reasons why arrest figures are lower, when crime is higher, but it would be fair to suggest that a lack of police resources and a change in the way crimes are recorded would have contributed to this change."

Violence against the person was the biggest cause of arrests, 336,558 in total and a rise of more than 4,000 on the year before.

Arrests also increased for sexual offences but fell for all other types of crime including robbery, burglary, forgery and drugs.

There was a decline in the number of young people arrested. Crimes involving 18 to 20-year-olds resulted in 100,914 arrests in 2014-15, compared with 119,001 the year before.

And for 10 to 17-year-olds the number fell from 109,473 to 94,960.

However, arrests of under-10s rose from 21 to 32. Under-10s cannot be held responsible or charged for a crime and the figures related to children whose age was discovered after they were arrested.