Notifiable Offences
Definition
In England and Wales, the category of offences that must be formally reported to the Home Office and included in national crime statistics. Equivalent tiered categories exist in other jurisdictions and determine which offences appear in published figures.
- Jurisdiction
- England and Wales
- Reporting requirement
- Must be reported to the Home Office
- Function
- Feeds national crime statistics
- Comparable concept
- Similar tiered reporting categories exist in other countries
Common questions
Does every crime the police record count as a notifiable offence?+
No, only offences that fall within the defined notifiable list are included in the official national statistics; some lesser or purely local matters that police still record are excluded from that particular count.
Why does the notifiable/non-notifiable distinction matter for interpreting crime trends?+
Because published national figures only reflect notifiable offences, changes in what counts as notifiable, or shifts in how police classify borderline incidents, can move the headline statistics without any real change in underlying crime.
Related terms
- Attrition
- The progressive loss of cases as they move through the criminal justice system: from crime committed, to reported, to recorded, to prosecuted,...
- Counting Rules
- Administrative instructions that specify how agencies should convert incidents into statistical records: how to count multiple victims of one incident, how to...
- Police-Recorded Crime
- Criminal incidents formally logged by police following a report or officer discovery, counted according to nationally defined rules and submitted to a...
- Reporting Rate
- The proportion of crimes experienced by victims that are brought to the attention of police. Reporting rates vary substantially by offence type,...
- Secondary Victimisation
- Additional harm caused to a victim through the process of reporting and investigation, such as disbelief, insensitive questioning, or retraumatisation. Fear of...