Had a "conversation" over Christmas with a relative who said they would never step foot in London because it's a violent hellhole they wouldn't feel safe in. I tried to be rational and explain the reality as someone living there but whatever they read has completely warped their mind on what London looks like
You see it on here all the time. People act like London is one of those failed societies from 80s cinema like Robocop, I look out my window and step out my door and it's nothing of the sort. We're literally not living in the same reality as these people anymore.
As a northerner it pains me to say this but... London is great. Fucking love it every time I visit and I'd live there in a heartbeat if rent for a decent place wasn't £3k a month.
I'm a northerner too (well north Midlands, chesterfield area). I love London for visiting but I'd find it too busy to live in. Its laughable how many people live near me and have never even ventured out of derbyshire, yet they're so sure London is a third world mess. It's crazy, it's a brilliant city and I always find something new to do whenever I go
I was the same before I moved down and thought everywhere was basically Oxford Street the Saturday before Christmas, but once you get to Zone 2 or 3 (less so in the East, I admit) the hustle and bustle calms right down and you're basically just in any other good sized town in the country.
It's a nightmare when you go back home and see that the bus is 15 minutes away, or when you realise you can't order in teabags and sugar at half 2 in the morning.
Yeah, but we're talking about what apparently makes London more dangerous than other places. Capitalist overreach isn't part of that. In fact there's an argument to be made that the gentrification of the city and areas around it is what contributed to the improvement in crime numbers.
I moved to London from a dead end UK countryside city / town and have now made a great life here. It’s objectively one of the best cities in the world (ranked 1st place for over a decade).
I have also noticed the same back at home and the narrative almost certainly comes from malicious nation state threat actors, particularly on social media. It’s always funny because the people with the strongest anti-London opinions don’t even travel to London.
Either way, I’ll take my completely negligible increase in safety risk over a boring life all day long thank you very much.
Russians should be on their knees begging Orthodox God that they're as good as they are at hybrid warfare and disinformation.
They managed to spread that kind of shit into the minds of the vulnerable in Europe whilst their army is busy taking inches of Ukraine every week.
My mum says "be careful" on the phone to me every time I speak to her like I'm living in a cyberpunk dystopia where I might be pulled into human trafficking murder cult gang at any moment, despite me living a completely fine and crime-free life here for years.
As someone who has lived in london all my life I deifinitely haven't seen or heard about any increase in crime vs 20-30 years ago. However it does look pretty bad everywhere, my area used to be thought of as leafy and up market but the state of it now, looks similar to deprived inner city parts of London.
I (not a Londoner) would not be too worried about violence when visiting London, but I keep fearing that my phone would be stolen as according to this 42% of all phone thefts in the UK happen in London. And that's 16% of all phone thefts in the entire Europe.
Am I irrational with my fear of having my phone stolen in London?
I am born in London but live in Manchester. I think both are quite similar crime wise apart from phone thefts. They seem far more prevalent in London. I could be wrong mind, that’s just my feeling from someone that knows both cities well
Lol last week I was in London Bridge, I got harassed by a mentally unwell station until station security stepped out. Then a homeless man threatened to kill himself if I didn't give him any money. Kebab man scolded us for not having cash. Finally a man was shouting abuse at his missus all the way back home and they both screamed at us when we intervened. It's actually all very sad.
Bro where do you live in the UK where none of the above could feasibly happen, unless you live in the middle of nowhere that could be literally any city in the UK.
This follows the general downward trend in violent crime in the UK from way back in 1995. The UK is much safer than it was 10 or 20 or 30 years ago and we should celebrate that!
This isn't true. There are just more offences recorded by police because the way they handle and record sexual offense has changed. You have to use CSEW data to get the real picture.
If you look at the actual underlying prevalence of sexual offences in the UK, it hasn't meaningfully changed over the last 20 years.
Either you believe people from here shouldn't be able to leave the country because we're literally worse than any other, or that other factors such as likelihood to report play a role.
Absolutely horrific and worse for the fact that this serious increase is UK wide. There seems to be a sense that it is to do with increased reporting of this crime so was it always thus?
Utterly depressing either way and compared to the shockingly low conviction rates this situation really needs to be tackled in some way.
Londons getting a lot better generally, the vibe has shifted in the last 12 months or so. Not sure if that’s something to do with the stagnation in house prices too, but could be.
I saw a video in London the other day where some dude was trying to get his phone make of cake stolen by leaving it unguarded on a table outside right beside a public pathway... it took hours for someone to even make an attempt and even then another member of the public stopped them.
Not disputing this, but it would be interesting to know how this relates to both an aging population, and one where people on normal incomes can no longer afford to live in London?
Unless you can control for societal changes like this, is not accurate to comment on whether policing (and other policies) are better or worse.
Not sure if you're wanting a genuine answer but if so:
Sexual Offences cover more than just rape, and have seen a big uptick all over the UK due to a few reasons:
In 2014/2015, we changed police recording practices by applying the National Crime Reporting standard more strictly which meant police stopped applying informal "credibility" checks and reports were more likely to be recorded as a crime
Post MeToo in ~2016/2017, we saw more historic acts being reported, less social stigma attached to reporting encouraging people to come forward and more reporting in relationships/marriages
Over the past decade, we've seen clearer legal framing around consent, improved training for police officers around sexual offences and more and more behaviour classed as an offence.
Just to try to explain the rise in sexual offences. It doesn't mean there has been this dramatic increase of sexual offences year on year compared to ~2012, it means people are more likely to come forwards, be taken seriously and it be recorded.
I think this is what is meant when people say there has been improved reporting.
That doesn't explain the 30-40% increase in rape reports since 2020. I suppose you could claim it's because more woman are reporting rape although I don't understand how the evidence works on this.
The short version is that rape and sexually violence (for both genders) is vastly under reported, so even small improvements leads to a large percentage increase in the number reported.
Again short but the mid-term trend in E&W is that the presence of sexual violence has remained broadly consistent 2005 to 2025, while police recording has significantly increased since 2013.
You see the same pattern in Scotland where the number of sexually offences recorded by police has increased significantly since the early 2010s.
We also have significantly more historic crimes being reported to police now, which are recorded for the year they were reported rather than when they occurred, which skews the numbers to an extent.
As fucked up as it sounds that actually also could be positive not that people are being assaulted of course but that the assaults are being reported. The number of assaults that happen is way higher than the number of assaults that are actually reported so while it could be true that it’s a pure numerical increase while the percent reported remains the same all the other evidence of crime going down means it’s likely that the total number of people raped is either flatlining or going down and the percentage of people reporting assaults is going up.
It’s not cherry picking data. It’s just a different news story.
A spike in rapes is certainly worth discussing, but the lowest homicide figure ever recorded is indisputably newsworthy. It’s weird that you’re finding reason to be grumpy about it.
Ironically enough, I guess the disconnect between the statistics and how safe people actually feel walking around probably is related to gang violence vs other crime.
Homicides are down. Homicides of under 25s are down. The Violence Reduction Unit, which speaks to young people after they've been arrested and tries to divert them away from crime, is reporting a 90% success rate.
Statistically speaking, London is safer than it's ever been, safer than many other cities in the UK and safer than most major global cities worldwide.
But when that was never the London you visited, the fact that you can't take your phone out of your pocket in busy public places without being hypervigilant that someone's going to snatch it out of your hands, often on a moped/bike, and often armed with a knife, is a deeply worrying change and does impact how safe you feel.
The stats seem to suggest that there was a peak in those kinds of thefts in 2024 and they're actually on their way down again now, but people's perceptions tend to lag behind reality a little.
Definitely, it's entirely down to perceptions rather than actual fact.
Like when we're told there's a massive knife crime epidemic, it makes us think we're all at risk but when you dig into the statistics - the vast majority of victims of knife crime are involved in those activities themselves.
If you're a regular citizen going around your business, though it can happen, it's incredibly unlikely that you would be a victim.
But when that was never the London you visited, the fact that you can't take your phone out of your pocket in busy public places without being hypervigilant that someone's going to snatch it out of your hands, often on a moped/bike, and often armed with a knife, is a deeply worrying change and does impact how safe you feel.
I think this perception is the major problem, the vast majority of London and most Londoners/visitors lives are just not affected by phone thefts and the thefts when they do happen certainly do not involve knives in the majority of cases. I live and work in London and would only consider phone theft being a issue in the dark, in Central where there is a concentration of night life where your phone can be snatched from a moped or bike.
Are these thefts a problem? Of course, and I do not try to limit that, just the incorrect perception violence and prevelence of these crimes.
I'm not necessarily saying that the crimes themselves are violent when I say that they're armed (statistically, the thief is carrying a knife in about 25% of cases), but it's definitely a factor in how violating it feels. With those odds, you really can't consider running after the thief, overpowering them and getting your phone back without risking your life.
I'll grant you that looking at the stats saying that they're "often" on mopeds or bikes may have been overstating the case. Apparently it's 1 in 10, so the remaining 90% of snatch thefts are from people around you. But if anything that's possibly more concerning? They're not as fast on foot, but you aren't going to see them coming as easily either.
There were 117,211 thefts of phones in London in 2024. That's 321 separate crimes a day in one city.
And that's not something that's easy to wave away as "oh, but per capita it's probably no different to other UK cities." It's about 1172 thefts per 100,000 people per year. Manchester only has 255 phone thefts per 100,000 people per year.
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Had a "conversation" over Christmas with a relative who said they would never step foot in London because it's a violent hellhole they wouldn't feel safe in. I tried to be rational and explain the reality as someone living there but whatever they read has completely warped their mind on what London looks like
You see it on here all the time. People act like London is one of those failed societies from 80s cinema like Robocop, I look out my window and step out my door and it's nothing of the sort. We're literally not living in the same reality as these people anymore.
As a northerner it pains me to say this but... London is great. Fucking love it every time I visit and I'd live there in a heartbeat if rent for a decent place wasn't £3k a month.
I'm a northerner too (well north Midlands, chesterfield area). I love London for visiting but I'd find it too busy to live in. Its laughable how many people live near me and have never even ventured out of derbyshire, yet they're so sure London is a third world mess. It's crazy, it's a brilliant city and I always find something new to do whenever I go
I was the same before I moved down and thought everywhere was basically Oxford Street the Saturday before Christmas, but once you get to Zone 2 or 3 (less so in the East, I admit) the hustle and bustle calms right down and you're basically just in any other good sized town in the country.
It's a nightmare when you go back home and see that the bus is 15 minutes away, or when you realise you can't order in teabags and sugar at half 2 in the morning.
I live in Central London in a new-build flat and my mortgage isn’t even £3,000.
Ha, I knew when I posted that I'd get a comment like this!
Point is, for a like for like property the rent in London would be 2-3 times more than I am paying and I live in the South East these days!
It is - just not in terms of crime. The grotesque corporatisation of everything is soulless and dystopian
Ok, but that's not exactly exclusive to London is it?
Nar course not, but we're talking about London ent we?
Yeah, but we're talking about what apparently makes London more dangerous than other places. Capitalist overreach isn't part of that. In fact there's an argument to be made that the gentrification of the city and areas around it is what contributed to the improvement in crime numbers.
"I've been to London; Oxford Street, Leicester Square, Kings Cross - I've seen it all!"
I find it less corporate than non-London. In London you get more small and boutique shops and cafes, outside it's often only the mega chains.
I moved to London from a dead end UK countryside city / town and have now made a great life here. It’s objectively one of the best cities in the world (ranked 1st place for over a decade).
I have also noticed the same back at home and the narrative almost certainly comes from malicious nation state threat actors, particularly on social media. It’s always funny because the people with the strongest anti-London opinions don’t even travel to London.
Either way, I’ll take my completely negligible increase in safety risk over a boring life all day long thank you very much.
Russians should be on their knees begging Orthodox God that they're as good as they are at hybrid warfare and disinformation. They managed to spread that kind of shit into the minds of the vulnerable in Europe whilst their army is busy taking inches of Ukraine every week.
My mum says "be careful" on the phone to me every time I speak to her like I'm living in a cyberpunk dystopia where I might be pulled into human trafficking murder cult gang at any moment, despite me living a completely fine and crime-free life here for years.
Fortunately my parents aren't like that - my Dad lived in Brixton during the 1980s and knows what a crime-ridden London really looks like.
Yeah, my old man who's lived in London for almost seventy years of his life now balks at the idea it's somehow rougher these days than the 70s.
Can't be true mate
I've heard mobile phone thefts are up ten billion percent over 1986. Country is going to the dogs!
As someone who has lived in london all my life I deifinitely haven't seen or heard about any increase in crime vs 20-30 years ago. However it does look pretty bad everywhere, my area used to be thought of as leafy and up market but the state of it now, looks similar to deprived inner city parts of London.
Lack of council funds to do proper street cleaning.
Loads of pavements are really filthy like they weren't even 10 years ago.
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I (not a Londoner) would not be too worried about violence when visiting London, but I keep fearing that my phone would be stolen as according to this 42% of all phone thefts in the UK happen in London. And that's 16% of all phone thefts in the entire Europe.
Am I irrational with my fear of having my phone stolen in London?
I am born in London but live in Manchester. I think both are quite similar crime wise apart from phone thefts. They seem far more prevalent in London. I could be wrong mind, that’s just my feeling from someone that knows both cities well
Reality is completely irrelevant to those who view their world through the lens of platforms like x et al.
Lol last week I was in London Bridge, I got harassed by a mentally unwell station until station security stepped out. Then a homeless man threatened to kill himself if I didn't give him any money. Kebab man scolded us for not having cash. Finally a man was shouting abuse at his missus all the way back home and they both screamed at us when we intervened. It's actually all very sad.
Yeah I’ll take things that didn’t happen for 10 points please Alex
In "London bridge" what do you mean?
Presumably the tube station there
Bro where do you live in the UK where none of the above could feasibly happen, unless you live in the middle of nowhere that could be literally any city in the UK.
Unambiguously brilliant news.
This follows the general downward trend in violent crime in the UK from way back in 1995. The UK is much safer than it was 10 or 20 or 30 years ago and we should celebrate that!
Yes completely. But in raw numbers overall crime is up
No, it really is down.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2025/pdf
The total volume of crime in the UK has reduced by 75% from its peak in '95. It really is incredibly positive if you look at the big picture.
Unless you're a woman.
Rapes are at an all time high in London.
This isn't true. There are just more offences recorded by police because the way they handle and record sexual offense has changed. You have to use CSEW data to get the real picture.
If you look at the actual underlying prevalence of sexual offences in the UK, it hasn't meaningfully changed over the last 20 years.
Source: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/sexualoffencesprevalenceandtrendsenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2025
Phew, at least we've got a convenient explanation for it all.
England & Wales has the highest recorded rate of rape in the entire world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics
Either you believe people from here shouldn't be able to leave the country because we're literally worse than any other, or that other factors such as likelihood to report play a role.
Absolutely horrific and worse for the fact that this serious increase is UK wide. There seems to be a sense that it is to do with increased reporting of this crime so was it always thus?
Utterly depressing either way and compared to the shockingly low conviction rates this situation really needs to be tackled in some way.
For information these two clips shows what interviews with rape victims used to look like in the past-
https://youtu.be/x7cAPe0dkL8?t=1203
https://youtu.be/x7cAPe0dkL8?t=1656
Is this the London GBNews is always having a fit over?
But how else will their watchers foam at the mouth over a place they’d never visit
But what about all the unreported homicides /s
Londons getting a lot better generally, the vibe has shifted in the last 12 months or so. Not sure if that’s something to do with the stagnation in house prices too, but could be.
Nice of everyone to start disposing of their bodies in a completely untraceable way just to make London's stats look better!
😡😡😡😡 No! London is dangerous and full of criminals!
Some people get their phone snatched sometimes, which is the WORST crime. London is a hellhole and I would never go there EVER.
Yours sincerely, every single user of UK Reddit
I saw a video in London the other day where some dude was trying to get his phone make of cake stolen by leaving it unguarded on a table outside right beside a public pathway... it took hours for someone to even make an attempt and even then another member of the public stopped them.
Leave me alone, you don’t represent me.
Not disputing this, but it would be interesting to know how this relates to both an aging population, and one where people on normal incomes can no longer afford to live in London?
Unless you can control for societal changes like this, is not accurate to comment on whether policing (and other policies) are better or worse.
It's not just a London thing. Crime has been trending downwards across the UK for decades.
But I totally agree it's not really down to policing. It's an overall indicator of the health of a society, and we should be more proud of it.
Not just the UK, almost all developed countries have seen significant falls in crime since the 90s.
One theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis
You mean "younger people on normal incomes"
Older people already have their homes whether mortgaged, owned outright or social housing.
Oh boy, the bots and Reformers will hate this. Or actually like it isn't true.
Shariah law finally doing its thing, thanks Sadiq
/s Americans
Overall crime rate is at a recent record high though https://www.statista.com/statistics/380963/london-crime-rate/?srsltid=AfmBOopErJ4Djvwec52Wp9TMPRmiG9P09cs9CnY_16h6cMfconbE2j0r
so basically the homicide rate is now the same as it was when Khan was first elected in as Mayor?
Not only is that incorrect but:
2014 was the only lower number, but with a lower population too.
2016 when Khan was elected, was a higher number, with a lower population.
Yes, he's performing equally as well as Boris, and he apparently is proud of that fact rather than embarrassed.
It is when you factor in decades of public service cuts welfare, mental health support - under the Tories, Covid etc.
Getting crime rates to the same as when things were a lot better, country wise, is good going.
Would be interesting to know how much of this has to do with advances in emergency medicine.
And apparently rapes are at an all-time high because of improved reporting. How do you get to that conclusion?
An unreported homicide isn't really a thing; you've got a dead body. Unreported rapes represent the majority of rapes.
Not sure if you're wanting a genuine answer but if so:
Sexual Offences cover more than just rape, and have seen a big uptick all over the UK due to a few reasons:
In 2014/2015, we changed police recording practices by applying the National Crime Reporting standard more strictly which meant police stopped applying informal "credibility" checks and reports were more likely to be recorded as a crime
Post MeToo in ~2016/2017, we saw more historic acts being reported, less social stigma attached to reporting encouraging people to come forward and more reporting in relationships/marriages
Over the past decade, we've seen clearer legal framing around consent, improved training for police officers around sexual offences and more and more behaviour classed as an offence.
Just to try to explain the rise in sexual offences. It doesn't mean there has been this dramatic increase of sexual offences year on year compared to ~2012, it means people are more likely to come forwards, be taken seriously and it be recorded.
I think this is what is meant when people say there has been improved reporting.
That doesn't explain the 30-40% increase in rape reports since 2020. I suppose you could claim it's because more woman are reporting rape although I don't understand how the evidence works on this.
Looking at victim surveys compared with the actual police crime reports.
When looking at the two you can see how many people have been a victim of crime vs. how many of those are actually reported.
It's not an exact science but it's the established method currently.
It is tough though as you say and you're right to think it's hard to measure because it is.
The short version is that rape and sexually violence (for both genders) is vastly under reported, so even small improvements leads to a large percentage increase in the number reported.
Again short but the mid-term trend in E&W is that the presence of sexual violence has remained broadly consistent 2005 to 2025, while police recording has significantly increased since 2013.
You see the same pattern in Scotland where the number of sexually offences recorded by police has increased significantly since the early 2010s.
We also have significantly more historic crimes being reported to police now, which are recorded for the year they were reported rather than when they occurred, which skews the numbers to an extent.
Even murderers can’t afford knives, machetes etc. in this piss poor economy
Theresa May deserves credit for cutting police funding so much ten years ago. Turns out we don't need them!
And rapes are at the highest.
Cherry picking data is fun isn't it?https://www.statista.com/statistics/865788/total-sexual-offences-in-london/
As fucked up as it sounds that actually also could be positive not that people are being assaulted of course but that the assaults are being reported. The number of assaults that happen is way higher than the number of assaults that are actually reported so while it could be true that it’s a pure numerical increase while the percent reported remains the same all the other evidence of crime going down means it’s likely that the total number of people raped is either flatlining or going down and the percentage of people reporting assaults is going up.
It’s not cherry picking data. It’s just a different news story.
A spike in rapes is certainly worth discussing, but the lowest homicide figure ever recorded is indisputably newsworthy. It’s weird that you’re finding reason to be grumpy about it.
You would expect it to always be declining as medicine and medical response progresses.
Counting or not counting gang violence?
Neck explodes
Ironically enough, I guess the disconnect between the statistics and how safe people actually feel walking around probably is related to gang violence vs other crime.
Homicides are down. Homicides of under 25s are down. The Violence Reduction Unit, which speaks to young people after they've been arrested and tries to divert them away from crime, is reporting a 90% success rate.
Statistically speaking, London is safer than it's ever been, safer than many other cities in the UK and safer than most major global cities worldwide.
But when that was never the London you visited, the fact that you can't take your phone out of your pocket in busy public places without being hypervigilant that someone's going to snatch it out of your hands, often on a moped/bike, and often armed with a knife, is a deeply worrying change and does impact how safe you feel.
The stats seem to suggest that there was a peak in those kinds of thefts in 2024 and they're actually on their way down again now, but people's perceptions tend to lag behind reality a little.
Definitely, it's entirely down to perceptions rather than actual fact.
Like when we're told there's a massive knife crime epidemic, it makes us think we're all at risk but when you dig into the statistics - the vast majority of victims of knife crime are involved in those activities themselves.
If you're a regular citizen going around your business, though it can happen, it's incredibly unlikely that you would be a victim.
I think this perception is the major problem, the vast majority of London and most Londoners/visitors lives are just not affected by phone thefts and the thefts when they do happen certainly do not involve knives in the majority of cases. I live and work in London and would only consider phone theft being a issue in the dark, in Central where there is a concentration of night life where your phone can be snatched from a moped or bike.
Are these thefts a problem? Of course, and I do not try to limit that, just the incorrect perception violence and prevelence of these crimes.
I'm not necessarily saying that the crimes themselves are violent when I say that they're armed (statistically, the thief is carrying a knife in about 25% of cases), but it's definitely a factor in how violating it feels. With those odds, you really can't consider running after the thief, overpowering them and getting your phone back without risking your life.
I'll grant you that looking at the stats saying that they're "often" on mopeds or bikes may have been overstating the case. Apparently it's 1 in 10, so the remaining 90% of snatch thefts are from people around you. But if anything that's possibly more concerning? They're not as fast on foot, but you aren't going to see them coming as easily either.
There were 117,211 thefts of phones in London in 2024. That's 321 separate crimes a day in one city.
And that's not something that's easy to wave away as "oh, but per capita it's probably no different to other UK cities." It's about 1172 thefts per 100,000 people per year. Manchester only has 255 phone thefts per 100,000 people per year.