data.police.uk assigns every record in the street-level files to one of
fourteen categories: anti-social behaviour plus thirteen crime types. This
table gives the labels exactly as they appear in the Crime type column of
the archive CSV files, a snake_case key used for panel columns, the slug used
by the police.uk API, and two package-defined groupings.
Value
A tibble with one row per category and columns crime_type,
key, api_slug, is_asb, in_crime_total, group and broad_group.
Details
Anti-social behaviour (ASB) is not a crime: ASB incidents carry no Crime ID
and no outcome, so is_asb is TRUE and in_crime_total is FALSE for
that row and lamp_panel() keeps ASB in its own series.
The category set was verified against the police.uk API and archive files
on 2026-09-16. It has been stable since the May 2013 data, when
data.police.uk introduced bicycle theft and theft from the person
(previously within other theft), split public disorder and weapons into
possession of weapons and public order, and renamed violent crime to
violence and sexual offences. Files for September 2011 to April 2013 use
eleven categories and files for December 2010 to August 2011 only six, with
a very broad other crime. since gives the first data month of each
current category; lamp_read_crime() maps legacy labels where the mapping
is one to one and keeps Public disorder and weapons as its own level.
group follows the Home Office offence groups with the six theft
categories combined; broad_group collapses further into violent,
acquisitive, drugs, damage, other and asb. Both groupings are the
package's own and are documented here so that results by offence group can
be reproduced.
Examples
lamp_crime_types()
#> # A tibble: 14 × 8
#> crime_type key api_slug is_asb in_crime_total group broad_group since
#> <chr> <chr> <chr> <lgl> <lgl> <chr> <chr> <date>
#> 1 Anti-socia… anti… anti-so… TRUE FALSE asb asb 2010-12-01
#> 2 Bicycle th… bicy… bicycle… FALSE TRUE theft acquisitive 2013-05-01
#> 3 Burglary burg… burglary FALSE TRUE theft acquisitive 2010-12-01
#> 4 Criminal d… crim… crimina… FALSE TRUE crim… damage 2011-09-01
#> 5 Drugs drugs drugs FALSE TRUE drugs drugs 2011-09-01
#> 6 Other crime othe… other-c… FALSE TRUE other other 2010-12-01
#> 7 Other theft othe… other-t… FALSE TRUE theft acquisitive 2011-09-01
#> 8 Possession… poss… possess… FALSE TRUE poss… violent 2013-05-01
#> 9 Public ord… publ… public-… FALSE TRUE publ… violent 2013-05-01
#> 10 Robbery robb… robbery FALSE TRUE robb… violent 2010-12-01
#> 11 Shoplifting shop… shoplif… FALSE TRUE theft acquisitive 2011-09-01
#> 12 Theft from… thef… theft-f… FALSE TRUE theft acquisitive 2013-05-01
#> 13 Vehicle cr… vehi… vehicle… FALSE TRUE theft acquisitive 2010-12-01
#> 14 Violence a… viol… violent… FALSE TRUE viol… violent 2013-05-01