Football fan arrests in England and Wales at its highest point in seven years

Football-related arrests in England and Wales have reached their highest point in seven years.

Data recorded by the Home Office shows there were 2,198 arrests made during the 2021/22 season, just below the 2,273 recorded in the 2014/15 campaign.

There had been a decrease since that point year-by-year, but a sharp rise has seen the number of arrests in England and Wales more than double compared to the 2019/20 season, where stadiums were last at full capacity before the COVID-19 pandemic, and increase by 59% from the 2018/19 campaign.

The Home Office also published the total of arrests from each professional league, with Premier League and EFL Championship sides headlining the highest totals, making up 52% of the overall arrests for the 2021/22 season.

Premier League clubs contributed to 28% with 614 arrests and EFL Championship sides recorded 529, which came to 24%.

In comparison to the 2019/20 season, Premier League and EFL Championship clubs still lead the way for most football-related arrests, but with a much lower total, as Premier League clubs had 328 arrests and EFL Championship clubs having 286.

Michael Johnson is the director of the UK Football Policing Unit and says one of the reasons for the rise in arrests was the return of supporters to stadiums after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Johnson said: “When football resumed after COVID, everyone was released back to doing what they would do normally and there was an outpour of disorder not only in football but in general society, and the police would witness this in town centres and licensed premises for example, so we had to put more police resources back into football, and by doing so, this resulted in more arrests.”

Michael Johnson also spoke about multiple plans in place for the police to prevent a further increase of arrests, which include handing out more banning orders to offending supporters, and increased training for stewards.

Johnson added: “We’ve had to adapt our processes to prevent this from continuing, we’re now working very closely with both the leagues and the clubs to issue out more bans to fans, including applying for banning orders, provided the person is arrested within two hours before or after the match, with the longest ban from football games being 10 years, the possession of drugs has also been added to the list of what you can receive a banning order for.

“We’re also working to give more training to stewards on how to deal with football disorder which is beneficial and we’re also doing more work with the Safety Advisory Group around restrictions of numbers of people that attend high-risk games, as this could lead to more disorder and arrests.

“From this, the early sign from this season is a leveling off of the disorder and we’re hoping after next year, when the banning orders take effect, we’ll start taking the numbers of arrests down too.”