Sexual offences rise on railways, as more than 2,000 crimes reported to police

Crime reporter(wp/es):

Sexual offences on Britain’s railways are on the rise with more than 2,000 crimes reported last year, official figures show.

The number of sexual offences committed has increased by 16 per cent, jumping to 2,742, although officers believe this may only be a fraction of crimes, as “there are still many more crimes of this type which go unreported.”

60 per cent of these crimes were committed against women, British Transport Police (BTP) said.

Figures of how many offences have been reported to BTP have been published in an annual report. Data reveals some 61,159 crimes were reported by BTP in 2017/18, up from 52,235 during the previous 12 months.

Violent crime accounts for nearly one in five of all cases after rising by 26 per cent to 11,711.

BTP said 63 per cent of these violent crimes were classed as “common assaults”, which involved no injury to the victim.

Offences involving knives or other weapons went up by 46 per cent to 206, while robbery jumped by 53 per cent to 553 recorded crimes.

BTP chief constable Paul Crowther said: "The chances of becoming a victim of crime on the rail network remains low.

"However, after a long period of steady decreases, both crimes per million passenger journeys and notifiable offences have increased."

Nineteen crimes in total were recorded per million passenger journeys.

Forces in England and Wales registered just under 1.4 million offences in the "violence against the person" category in 2017/18 - a rise of nearly a fifth (19 per cent) compared with the previous year.

BTP's figures show a number of other crimes increasing on the rail network, including throwing missiles at trains (up 35 per cent to 316), arson (up 93 per cent to 143), live cable theft (up 86 per cent to 158) and theft from vending machines (up 21 per cent to 240).

The report also addressed terrorism, making reference to the Manchester Arena attack and London attacks.

It read: “The current threat level for international terrorism in the UK is ‘severe’, which means an attack is highly likely.

“However, last year on two occasions the terrorist threat leave was raised to ‘critical’, meaning an attack was expected imminently.

“On both occasions, we mobilised additional officers and worked with our policing partners to increase the number of armed police officers patrolling the rail network to protect the public and rail staff.”

It also tackled the issue of County Lines, adding it has “identified 476 individuals associated with County Lines gangs using trains.”

131 of these individuals were thought to be frequent travellers, it added.

As well as looking at violent and sexual crimes, the annual report also listed incidents such as people trying to harm themselves on the railway and trespassers.

The total number of people known to take their lives on Britain’s railways was 310, compared to 292.

The report read: “We are pleased to report that the number of life-saving interventions increased by 648, with 1,917 people prevented from harming themselves on the railway.”

While more people were helped by life-saving interventions, BTP said the number of trespass incidents has reached its “biggest increase.”

The total number of lost minutes increased by 22 per cent and trespass now accounts for 43 per cent of overall disruption, up from 38 per cent last year.

The force said the increase in the total number of crimes is partly due to improving the way crime is recorded, which has increased accuracy and given victims and witnesses "more confidence to report crime".

Paul Plummer, chief executive of industry body the Rail Delivery Group, said: "The nature of some crimes is changing and as part of our long-term plan to change and improve, we are investing in new technology and innovations to make our railway even safer for our staff and customers."