Talk:List of major crimes in the United Kingdom

WikiProject British Crime

 * For those interested, a WikiProject regarding crime in Great Britain has been proposed. MadMax 19:16, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
 * WikiProject British crime is now defunct and its banner is being replaced by banners for WikiProject Crime and Criminal Biography and WikiProject United Kingdom - Cameron Dewe (talk) 02:35, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

John Bodkin Adams
John Bodkin Adams, it seems to me, should not have been placed on this list. Given that he was acquitted in a court of law, and no evidence has ever been presented in any court, anywhere, of his having murdered 163+ people, to repeat such an accusation here, as though it were proven fact, is highly improper. I suggest his name be struck from the list, unless someone has decided that an accusation in a published account has the same weight as an acquittal at trial. Such a conclusion is highly dubious. --- RepublicanJacobite  The'FortyFive'  21:35, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * An acquittal would trump a book sure, unless there is real cause to think the acquittal was arrived at in a less than fair way. Cullen, 2006, gives a convincing argument for such a view (see Adams' page), Devlin, the trial judge, also says the prosecution's behaviour was highly improper, and then Hallworth says the prosecution chose the wrong case to prosecute. There is thus a scholarly consensus that the trial was badly handled, and Cullen, the only author to have had access to Scotland Yard's archives is quite adamant and eloquent in her presentation of the evidence that there were multiple murders committed by this man. For this reason the acquittal is highly dubious (and was thought so at the time by all the majority of the press) and Adams' place here is legitimate. Let's not forget that Adams was later fined 2,400 pounds, when the top fine was (I think I'm right in saying) just 500 for prescription fraud... The judge in this second case used discretionary powers to raise the fine limit. Also, Adams was banned for the rest of his life from prescribing dangerous drugs. All this taken together suggests we should see Cullen, 2006's conclusions to be reliable. Malick78 10:52, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * A consensus amongst scholars that his trial was mishandled or was an outright miscarriage of justice does not reverse the verdict. We have to err on the side of caution.  He was acquitted, that is a fact, everything else, no matter how intellectually rigorous, is speculation.  He is not a murderer, and by Wikipedia's standards, he cannot be called a murderer, no matter what anyone thinks. ---  RepublicanJacobite  The'FortyFive'  15:49, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

redirected from "crime in Britain/the united kingdom"
When typing in crime in the United Kingdom I was hoping to find a detailed article with statistics on crime, like the crime in the United States article. I don't think a handful of famous criminal incidences really makes for a decent article on "crime in the United Kingdom".--114.77.125.75 (talk) 16:02, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Inclusion criteria?
The list has more entries for 2006/7 than for the whole of the 19th century. Obviously the 19th century should be expanded, but do so many modern crimes (such as a stabbing or murder of one baby) in an era of saturation media coverage real deserve to be in this list? I'm not saying they are entirely irrelevant, but it makes the list unweildly in my view. Any thoughts?

And should comments in the right hand column be limited? Perhaps to three or four lines? Malick78 (talk) 18:07, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Headings look bad
In my view splitting it into headings such as "Murders" and "Spree Killers"" looks horrible, and is not useful. We can have separate lists for murders if necessary... What do others think? I'm also changing 1800's to 1800s, etc. The latter is universally considered correct, while the former is frequently considered wrong (cf. "1800's general election" - one particular year rather than a decade/century). Malick78 (talk) 21:21, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Length of entries getting excessive
Some entries are getting excessively long. I cut some down today, but in general I think they should all be just one paragraph, except for very exceptional events which may require two. Usually that should be just for cases which led to changes in the law, I would think.Malick78 (talk) 11:11, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Recentism
Although the "Child Killers/Killings" section comprises 30 entries, a whopping 11 - more than a third - of them have occured within the last ten years (specifically 2007-2014). Considering that under-16s usually make up less than ten percent of homicide victims, and child suspects are even more rare, this looks suspisciously like cases being added simply because they get report. I'm going to remove the Georgia Williams entry, partly because she was 17, but mostly because the case isn't notable for its own page. We should, though, look to reduce the number of recent cases in this section. Nick Cooper (talk) 15:04, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
 * This list is still disproportionately long, and looking at it again I do not think we can justify the inclusion of Joel Smith killings, given that of the two deaths, the step-father was clearly the intended target, and the child killed only because she was a potential witness. This is quite different to other cases in the list, which are largely the deliberate targetting of children. Nick Cooper (talk) 11:56, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Orphaned references in List of major crimes in the United Kingdom
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of List of major crimes in the United Kingdom's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "BBCconvicted": From Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal:  From Derby sex gang:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 14:54, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Murder of Rob Knox
Rob Knox has been added, but his murder does not really seem to meet the standard of a "major crime." It only has notability by virtue of Knox's acting career, which was obviously unconnected with his death. Tragic though it was, it wasn't particularly different from any other random street killing. I'm going to remove it for now, but it would be useful to get other editors' opinions on it. Nick Cooper (talk) 21:25, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Orphaned references in List of major crimes in the United Kingdom
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of List of major crimes in the United Kingdom's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "guilty": From Murder of Alesha MacPhail:  From Murder of Sarah Payne:  From Murder of Sophie Lancaster:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 17:22, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Inclusion criteria? (again)
I see a vast number of minor bombings have been included, with no evidence that they "received significant media coverage or led to changes in legislation". They are not the only problematic entries on the list. Is this list fixable or not? FDW777 (talk) 07:48, 28 September 2019 (UTC)


 * This is a very important question. I want to know for instance, does my latest article on the Manchester child sex abuse ring qualify for inclusion. They weren't just shoplifters or pickpockets. Their crimes were extremely serious and I believe would fit most people's idea of a major crime. Whatever we decide, the rule must be simple, clear and applied consistently. Maternalistic Lioness (talk) 15:37, 28 September 2019 (UTC)


 * There are several similar articles to this.
 * List of major crimes in Japan gives no inclusion criteria, and there is no agreement on the talk page what constitutes "major".
 * Timeline of major crimes in Australia gives no inclusion criteria, Talk:Timeline of major crimes in Australia appears to be the consensus for inclusion but a couple of sections since have discussed whether they need to be changed
 * List of major crimes in Singapore says "Major crimes such as homicide, kidnapping, firearm-related, aggravated sexual crime like rape and sexual assault by penetration, bomb and explosive-related and other major sensitive crimes are investigated by Major Crime Division of Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in Singapore Police Force"
 * List of major crimes in Ireland gives no inclusion criteria, and there is no discussion at all on the talk page.
 * If the Singapore criteria were applied to this article, it would be huge. In 2018 there were 1,925 rape convictions (out of 58,657 reported rapes), and 732 homicides. If firearms related incidents were included as well, the 12 months up to March 2018 had 6,521 firearms offences. Those three types of crime alone would be approximately 9,000 major crimes, just for one 12-month period. FDW777 (talk) 18:37, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
 * FDW777 and Maternalistic Lioness, to restart this discussion from 2019 there is a ready solution: rename this list article to "List of crimes in the United Kingdom" and limit inclusion to crimes on which there is an existing dedicated article (or an article about the perpetrator or victim). We would rely on WP:NEVENT and WP:CRIME rather than creating ad hoc definitions of "major". Fences  &amp;  Windows  23:43, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
 * That would be a sensible solution. FDW777 (talk) 07:17, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

Summaries of grooming gangs
I am concerned about some of the summaries of grooming gang articles in this list.

The coverage of grooming gangs on Wikipedia is being insidiously manipulated. My recent article on the Manchester child sex abuse ring was almost immediately hit by a deletion attempt on the basis that "This “ring” was not racially charged", meaning the grooming gang is white. The gang's members are almost certainly non-Muslim. That together with these racial comparisons have opened my eyes to what some editors are doing to Wikipedia.

The word "Muslim" in the opening sentence "A group of Muslim men who committed serious sexual offences against underage teenage girls in Bristol" must go. Maternalistic Lioness (talk) 21:51, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Unreferenced material removed
Since there were significant WP:BLP violations throughout the article, I have taken the drastic step of simply removing all unreferenced material. Feel free to add back with actual references. FDW777 (talk) 12:10, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Ruth Ellis
Would it be possible to add the Ruth Ellis case? 2601:4A:8481:C670:81F0:2067:312B:3DB5 (talk) 05:46, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

major crimes missing
Frauds - esp missing trader fraud; countrfeiting - e.g. the stamps, pound coins; bombings - IRA or otherwise; pollution incidents; fires or mass deaths due to corporate manslaughter seem to be missing. These are major crimes. Gangsters such as the Krays might also make the list. The question hinges over what is major in the UK there is the serious and organizedcrime act - this might be a useful place to start www.gov.uk/government/collections/serious-and-organised-crime-strategy 88.112.31.26 (talk) 05:10, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

"child sexual exploitation and abuse illegal drugs illegal firearms fraud money laundering and other economic crime bribery and corruption organised immigration crime modern slavery and human trafficking cyber crime"

is the UK gvt list - so presumably these have all happened. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.112.31.26 (talk) 05:12, 26 August 2022 (UTC)