What we can't tell you · Not published
What is the ethnicity of the offender for police-recorded offences, by offence and by force?
Not published The data is recorded, or could be produced from records, but no authority publishes it.
Why
No national series attaches suspect or offender ethnicity to police-recorded offences. In the year ending March 2026, 40.9% of victim-based offences were closed as "investigation complete; no suspect identified" and 7.3% resulted in a charge or summons, so for most recorded offences there is no identified person whose ethnicity could be recorded. ONS FOI response FOI-2025-3244 states ONS does not hold recorded crime by perpetrator ethnicity. Ethnicity is published at later stages: stop and search and arrests (Home Office), prosecutions, convictions and custody (Ministry of Justice, "Ethnicity and the criminal justice system"), the prison population, and homicide suspects (Homicide Index).
What is known
- Crime outcomes by offence group and force, including the share with no suspect identified charge_rate_by_offence_group
- Arrests and stop and search by self-defined ethnicity
- Prosecutions, convictions and sentencing by ethnicity (MoJ, biennial)
- Prison population by ethnicity prison_population_by_ethnicity
- Homicide suspects by ethnic appearance (ONS Homicide in England and Wales)
What is not known
- Suspect ethnicity for recorded offences at any geography or for any offence group
- Whether suspect ethnicity is returned to the Home Office Data Hub at record level is not stated in the published guidance
Who holds the data
- Police forces in England and Wales (crime and custody systems)
- Home Office (Data Hub, crime outcomes)
Would a Freedom of Information request help?
Possibly. Forces hold ethnicity for identified suspects in their own systems and have answered force-level requests for offences by suspect ethnicity; a national request is unlikely to add to the published series because no national compilation exists and most offences have no identified suspect.
Privacy and disclosure restrictions
Force-level responses apply small-number rounding or suppression. Any figure covers only offences with an identified suspect and must say so.
Official sources checked
- https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/crime-outcomes-in-england-and-wales-2025-to-2026/crime-outcomes-in-england-and-wales-2025-to-2026
- https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/knifecrimebyethnicity2020to2025
- https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/ethnicitybreakdownoftheperpetratorsofcrimes
Last reviewed 2026-09-02. Availability changes; if a publication now answers this question, challenge the classification below.