Britain’s trains are gripped by violent crime. These numbers prove it
Story by Ben Butcher, Rosa Silverman • 5h
Incidents like the mass stabbing on a train from Doncaster to London King’s Cross on Saturday are mercifully rare in Britain. But recent figures show that other types of violent crime on our rail network are not.
According to Office for Rail and Road (ORR) statistics, in this past year the number of assaults on passengers hit a record high. In 2024 alone, there were 10,231 such instances registered on mainline rail – the greatest recorded in 20 years of data. This included 4,395 cases of harassment, 3,805 cases of common assault and 1,613 cases of actual bodily harm.
It represented an increase of 6.9 per cent year-on-year, and was up from 3,211 cases a decade ago, according to the data released last month.
Worryingly for those using and working on the railways, the rise in violence and harassment on trains comes at a time when violent crime in the country at large appears to be declining. Figures from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (which includes crimes that may not have been reported to the police) show there were an estimated 1.1 million violent incidents last year, down from 1.7 million a decade ago.
While police-recorded violence decreased across the country last year, it increased by 7 per cent on mainline rail. British railways appear to be an outlier, then.
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