The area of the country covered by Cleveland Police – which includes Middlesbrough – has the highest crime rate in England and Wales.
Middlesbrough has been the scene of a number of major incidents in recent days, including a wrong-way crash on the A66 that killed seven people, including two police officers, and a fire that killed a woman and her seven-year-old niece.
A car also smashed into a house in South Bank in the early hours of Thursday morning, and a man was stabbed the same day.
Two hundred extra police officers, including detectives and armed response officers, are being deployed to the town following the incidents.
There were 123.4 recorded crimes per 1,000 population in the Cleveland area in the year to March 2026, according the latest available Home Office figures.
This is some way ahead of the force with the next highest rate, West Yorkshire (107.9), as well as the largest forces Greater Manchester (103.7) and the Metropolitan Police (101.0).
The rate for the whole of England and Wales in the year to March stood at 84.7 per 1,000 population.
Cleveland also tops the list in various categories of crime.
The force has the highest rate for shoplifting (15.9 recorded offences per 1,000 people); criminal damage and arson (15.0 per 1,000); violence with injury (12.6 per 1,000); burglary (6.1 per 1,000) and sexual offences (5.0 per 1,000).
It has the second highest rate for all offences involving violence against the person (44.3 per 1,000 people, behind West Yorkshire on 45.8); and for all theft offences (35.7 per 1,000, behind the Metropolitan Police on 46.4).
Crime rates are the fairest way to compare levels of offences across the country, as they take into account the size of the population in different areas.
Homicide rates are typically measured per million population, rather than per 1,000, given the very low number of offences recorded.
Cleveland Police had a homicide rate of 21.7 per million people in the year to March, higher than any other force.
The rate for the whole of England and Wales was 8.1 per million.
There were 157.2 knife offences per 100,000 people recorded by Cleveland Police in the year to March – again, the highest rate of any force.
This was up from 151.8 in the previous 12 months.
All crime rate comparisons exclude the City of London, due to its very small population size.
Four local authority areas are covered by Cleveland Police: Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar & Cleveland and Stockton-on-Tees.
It had 1,503 full-time equivalent officers as of March 31 2026, ranking it 31st out of the 43 territorial forces in England and Wales by size, ahead of Northamptonshire (1,488 officers) and behind Gwent (1,552).
