Kidnapping offences in England and Wales 2002-2024

In 2023/24 there were 7,277 kidnapping offences recorded by the police in England and Wales, a slight decrease when compared with the previous year when there were 7,378 offences. Kidnapping offences reached a low of 1,388 offences in the 2012/13 reporting year but have been increasing in almost every reporting year since then. 

Rising crime overall

Kidnapping offences have increased at a time of rising overall crime. After declining for several years between 2003/04 and 2010/11, overall crime offences suddenly started to increase, and reached a recent peak of 6.74 million offences in 2022/23. While the overall number of crimes has grown, UK crime rates are actually slightly lower than in the early 2000s, due to population growth. As of 2023/24, the number of crimes per 1,000 people was 89.7 in England and Wales, 55 in Scotland, and 58.4 in Northern Ireland. 

Money and manpower to blame?

The current crime trends that are prevailing in the UK have led to questions about the ability of the police to counter it, and if they have the manpower and resources to do so. For much of the 2010s the police had cuts to their funding leading to a decline in officer numbers, although both trends have recently been reversed, with funding increasing from the late 2010s onwards. Other parts of the justice system, such as legal aid funding have not seen a reversal of this trend, with spending in 2022/23 below that of 2014/15 in real terms.