Civometry

ONS · offence category: 86 Obscene publications, etc and protected sexual material

Police-recorded crime (excluding fraud): 86 Obscene publications, etc and protected sexual material

4 periods to Year ending March 2026

164,282offences

Police-recorded crime (excluding fraud) for 86 Obscene publications, etc and protected sexual material totalled 164,282 offences in the 4 periods to Year ending March 2026, up 37.2% (44,568) on the 4 periods before.

  1. ONS dataset
  2. Table A5a
  3. Obscene publications, etc and protected sexual material
  4. column “Apr 2025 to Mar 2026”
  5. 41802 per period
  6. published 23 July 2026

Year ending March 2003 to Year ending March 2026

Police-recorded crime by offence: Year ending March 2003 to Year ending March 2026LabourLabourLabourLabourCoalitionCoalitionConservativeConservativeConservativeConservativeLabour020k40k20052010201520202025Year ending March 2003: 2,106 offences · published 23 July 2026Year ending March 2004: 2,881 offences · published 23 July 2026Year ending March 2005: 2,861 offences · published 23 July 2026Year ending March 2006: 2,592 offences · published 23 July 2026Year ending March 2007: 2,378 offences · published 23 July 2026Year ending March 2008: 2,672 offences · published 23 July 2026Year ending March 2009: 2,775 offences · published 23 July 2026Year ending March 2010: 3,215 offences · published 23 July 2026Year ending March 2011: 3,342 offences · published 23 July 2026Year ending March 2012: 3,335 offences · published 23 July 2026Year ending March 2013: 3,506 offences · published 23 July 2026Year ending March 2014: 4,618 offences · published 23 July 2026Year ending March 2015: 8,053 offences · published 23 July 2026Year ending March 2016: 13,082 offences · published 23 July 2026Year ending March 2017: 18,846 offences · published 23 July 2026Year ending March 2018: 23,226 offences · published 23 July 2026Year ending March 2019: 25,296 offences · published 23 July 2026Year ending March 2020: 26,971 offences · published 23 July 2026Year ending March 2021: 31,935 offences · published 23 July 2026Year ending March 2022: 35,512 offences · published 23 July 2026Year ending March 2023: 40,915 offences · published 23 July 2026Year ending March 2024: 39,732 offences · published 23 July 2026Year ending March 2025: 41,833 offences · published 23 July 2026Year ending March 2026: 41,802 offences · published 23 July 2026
Published valueProvisional or revisedLatestShaded bands: governments (see labels)Hover or use arrow keys to read a value

What this measures

The number of offences recorded by the police in England and Wales for every offence and offence group in the ONS appendix table, for each year ending March since 2003. Coded rows are individual Home Office offence codes; rows marked (subtotal) are the groups the ONS prints without a code.

Offences whose code was retired or introduced part way through the series (shown as unavailable for those years), or fraud reported to Action Fraud and Report Fraud for the latest year.

Source

Dataset
Crime in England and Wales: Appendix tables
Release
Year ending March 2026, published 23 July 2026 · sha256 9e4a930ec090b4b4…
All values
Police-recorded crime (excluding fraud) by offence category