Arrests up, crime down, and more investigations solved: Crime stats show GMP’s continuing improvements

We’re continuing our journey to be the best force we can be for the people of Greater Manchester (GM).

The recently released Home Office crime figures for 2023 show a reduction in overall crime in GM and an increase in outcomes – meaning fewer victims and more offenders being brought to justice.

It follows our ‘back to basics’ approach, as we pledged three years ago that we would make significant improvements to fight crime, protect victims, and keep communities safe.

We are keen to ensure that our problem-solving approach to local policing continues to see communities increasingly protected from harm.

Where crimes are committed, we have substantially improved our response to victims in their time of need by picking up the phone in seconds and getting to incidents within minutes.

We have nearly 8,200 officers – the most in GMP history – after exceeding an ambitious recruitment target last year as part of the national Police Uplift Programme. We have invested in them to do the best they can in their roles with new uniform, body worn video and 313 new vehicles.

Our extra officers are helping us arrest more people, with twice as many suspects being arrested since March 2021.

As a result, our investigation teams are increasingly bringing offenders to justice. In the year up to March 2024 we solved 48% more crimes compared to three years ago and neighbourhood crime is down.

In July 2021 we led the way in committing ourselves to attending every residential burglary, which has helped us solve 77% more burglary offences. Every week around 50 fewer people in GM are now a victim of this invasive and ruinous crime compared to three years ago.

In the last year alone, we’ve driven down crimes such as burglary (24%), robbery (10.3%), vehicle crime (18.2%), violent crime (6.4%), and theft (4.8%).

We’re doing what we can to keep our roads safer. Our increased road policing unit seized 11,000 vehicles unfit for our streets last year. Fatalities have reduced by almost a third and there are 20% fewer collisions resulting in injury.

We’re constantly looking to improve how we get justice for victims of rape. In the last 12 months we’ve solved double the amount of rape offences and are now one of the better performing forces in England and Wales.

We know we have work to do to ensure more cases get to court, particularly in cases of violence against women and girls. We have increased domestic abuse arrests by almost 90% and domestic violence is down by 14.5%.

As we crack down on crime, we’re focused on the impact of crime and have become significantly better at solving victim-based crime with 54% more crimes solved, and 39% more crimes involving violence against a person have been solved.

These figures are proof of the improvements His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) recognised in its most recent inspection of GMP – grading us as being good or adequate in all bar one area which is a vast improvement from three years ago, and one we aim to improve on further.

Chief Constable Stephen Watson said: “Our overall performance is ahead of the national trend. We are proud to be a force for the people of GM which is widely recognised as rapidly improving and is on its way to being one of the best in the country.

“Our capability, resilience and professional endeavour has led to this speedy turnaround. We have proud and committed officers and staff who are doing what the public expect of us: to pick up the phone and respond quickly, to record crime faithfully, to investigate reasonable lines of enquiry, to protect victims and pursue suspects, and to fight, prevent and reduce crime.

“It is clear that in a vast majority of areas, we are bringing more criminals to justice and less crime is happening. This is better for victims, for communities, and for the decent hard-working people of GM.

“Every day and night our officers and staff work professionally and diligently to keep our communities safe. We will not relent on our journey to keep improving our prevention of crime, protection of people, and tackling of criminals, and we will continue to be a force for good for all of Greater Manchester.”