The number of burglaries in England and Wales has risen for the second quarter in a row, official figures show.
But the figures, for the three months to December 2008, show that the overall number of crimes recorded by the police fell by 4%, compared with 2007.
The number of killings involving a knife has fallen – but robberies at knifepoint have risen.
The statistics show that violence overall has fallen 6% compared with figures for the same period of 2007.
The Home Office uses two methods to measure crime – actual incidents recorded by the police and figures from the British Crime Survey, a large-scale rolling programme which asks the public about their experiences of crime.
