Or they've just redefined the categories as to what constitutes a sexual offence (could sexting between teenagers now be two counts of sexual liaison involving a minor plus an offence under publishing/electronic communication legislation?) to massage the figures like they always do.
The data on this are actually quite good, but the media rarely reports it well. The Home Office reports recorded crime together with the British Crime Survey, which is a half-decent measure of crime experienced. A quick flick at the original data (see e.g. http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs10/hosb1210.pdf) suggests that 'the report rate is up' is exactly what's going on here.
'Most serious sexual crime' recorded by the police ws up 7%, but the BCS datashow 'There were no changes in the overall prevalence of sexual assault between 2008/09 and 2009/10. The overall prevalence of sexual assault has fallen since 2004/05'. The simplest and most likely (though not only) explanation of the data is that there are slightly fewer sexual assaults going on but significantly more of them are resulting in a crime being recorded by the police.
It's still a startlingly low rate of reporting, though.
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Yes, I'm being flippant but you know what I mean.
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'Most serious sexual crime' recorded by the police ws up 7%, but the BCS datashow 'There were no changes in the overall prevalence of sexual assault between 2008/09 and 2009/10. The overall prevalence of sexual assault has fallen since 2004/05'. The simplest and most likely (though not only) explanation of the data is that there are slightly fewer sexual assaults going on but significantly more of them are resulting in a crime being recorded by the police.
It's still a startlingly low rate of reporting, though.