Fact check: How have rape rates changed in the UK from 2020 to 2024?

1. Sharp Numbers, Bigger Picture: What the rise actually shows

Police-recorded rape in England and Wales increased sharply across the early 2020s, with reports indicating an almost sixfold rise from the early 2000s and a recorded 71,667 offences by 2024/25, a figure repeatedly cited across statistical summaries ^{[1] [3]}. The rise is not confined to a single year; commentators and victim bodies flagged a record number in the year ending March 2021 with around 70,330 recorded rapes, indicating the surge began before 2024 and persisted through it ^[2]. These numbers represent recorded offences, which reflect a mix of genuine incidence changes, increased reporting, and evolving police recording practices.

2. Reporting versus reality: Why recorded increases may not equal incidence increases

The datasets show growing recorded offences, but multiple factors can drive recorded-volume changes including improved recording by police, greater willingness of victims to report, and changes in definitions or public awareness campaigns, alongside any real change in offending. Statisticians and commentators caution against interpreting police-recorded totals as direct measures of prevalence without accounting for these recording and reporting shifts ^{[1] [3]}. The 2021 spike flagged by the Victims’ Commissioner suggests a confluence of reporting and systemic factors rather than a simple, uniform rise in perpetrator behaviour ^[2].

3. Justice system performance: Charges and convictions tell a different story

While recorded offences rose, the proportion of cases progressing to charges has stayed very low, with reporting indicating a 2.97% charge rate for the pooled five-year period referenced and historical charge rates as low as 2.3% in 2020, declining from higher rates earlier in the decade ^{[4] [5]}. Separate analysis also documents conviction rates under 1% for reported rapes in some assessments, highlighting a consistent and severe attrition between report and legal resolution ^[6]. This mismatch between recorded volume and outcomes fuels concerns about systemic failures in investigation, charging decisions, and prosecutions.

4. Regional and temporal variation: Not all places or years are the same

Available analyses point to variation across police forces and years, with charge rates ranging widely—examples cited include rates from 1.3% in Surrey to 8.2% in Durham—indicating inconsistency in investigative capacity, case handling, and local policy ^[6]. Temporal patterns also matter: the year ending March 2021 is singled out as a record year for recorded rapes, but the 2024/25 figure represents a maintained high level, not a sudden one-off spike, suggesting persistent structural dynamics across multiple years ^{[2] [3]}.

5. Victim experience and institutional response: Faith in the system eroding

Reporting underscores that survivors and advocacy bodies have expressed loss of confidence in policing and prosecution given the low charge rates and slow progress from report to court: headlines and analysis stress that survivors are “losing faith” with fewer than 3% of suspected attackers charged in some datasets, a statistic used by campaigners to argue for urgent reform ^[4]. The low proportion of charges and the long-standing decline in charge rates since mid-decade indicate systemic obstacles to converting reports into accountable outcomes ^[5].

6. Sources, dates and consistency: How recent and diverse is the evidence?

The supplied analyses draw from a mix of statistical compilations and journalistic reporting dated across 2021–2025. The earliest source documents charge-rate declines through 2020 and 2021 ^{[5] [2]}, while the most recent figures citing 71,667 offences in 2024/25 and the under-3% charge rate are dated 2024–2025 ^{[1] [3] [4]}. Multiple sources converge on the core facts—rising recorded offences and persistently low charge rates—providing consistent cross-checking across time and outlet types ^{[1] [2] [4]}.

7. Missing context and cautionary notes the datasets omit

Key omitted considerations in these summaries include population-adjusted rates, the role of recording rule changes, and disaggregation by victim age, relationship to offender, or crime location, which affect interpretation of trends; the provided sources focus on counts and charge proportions without presenting standardized incidence rates or detailed methodological caveats ^{[3] [1]}. Also absent are in-depth breakdowns of case attrition points—investigation, CPS charging decisions, bail and disclosure issues—where reform advocates say the system fails survivors ^{[6] [4]}.

8. Bottom line: What the evidence supports and what it leaves open

The evidence supports two clear, linked facts: recorded rape offences rose sharply through the early 2020s into 2024/25, and criminal justice outcomes—charges and convictions—remain very low, producing a stark divergence between reported harm and legal accountability ^{[1] [3] [4]}. What remains unresolved by these datasets is the extent to which the recorded increase represents higher incidence versus increased reporting and recording, and the detailed systemic reasons for such low charge and conviction rates—gaps that require further, methodologically detailed study and transparency from official statistical producers ^{[2] [6]}.