Incident-count replacement after the crime drop: CSEW fraud and computer misuse against traditional crime, England and Wales, 1995 to 2026

Survey-measured crime in England and Wales has fallen by about four fifths per adult since the 1995 peak. One account holds that the fall is partly an artefact of measurement, because crime moved to places the old instruments do not count. Since the year ending March 2017 the Crime Survey for England and Wales has counted fraud and computer misuse, and eight annual estimates now exist, spanning the nine years to year ending March 2026. This data note sets the measured level of fraud and computer misuse beside the measured fall in traditional CSEW incidents, with every step fixed in advance of seeing the data. On the assumption most favourable to the replacement account, that fraud and computer misuse were zero in 1995, the destination category covers 0.31 of the fall in the index unit and 0.38 in counts; across every variant computed the ratio lies between 0.07 and 0.38. The fall also begins before United Kingdom internet use reaches 10 per cent, and it is spread across violence as well as acquisitive crime. Within the survey, the clean 2017 to 2020 window is not replacement-shaped. The note claims no causal effect, no statement about offenders, and nothing about crime the CSEW does not count; it contributes a transparent accounting decomposition with the survey breaks marked rather than smoothed, and a machine-readable series. Prepared with AI assistance, disclosed in full in the note's AI use statement.