Stalking Data Last 10 Years

Keywords

Stalking, Victim, Reported, Incidents, Males, Victims, Prosecution, Outcomes, Female, Rates, Recordable, Charged, Summonsed, Alternate, Offence, Gender.

Publication Number

PUB 1380

FOI Reference Number

16266

Request Title

Stalking Data Last 10 Years

Date Range

April 2014 until November 2021

Information Requested

Male stalking victim data over the previous 10 years. Number of reported incidents involving males as victims of stalking and prosecution outcomes of each reported incident. Also, female stalker data and their prosecution rates.

Disclosure with Exemptions

Part Disclosure with Section 12 Exemption

Information Correct as at

18 January 2022

Date of Disclosure

21 January 2021

Related Documents/Links

Stalking Offences

FOI 16266 Response

In respect of your enquiry:

Male stalking victim data over the previous 10 years. Number of reported incidents involving males as victims of stalking and prosecution outcomes of each reported incident. Also, female stalker data and their prosecution rates.

Having completed enquiries within Essex Police in respect of Section 1(1)(a), Essex Police does hold information relating to your request, however, the obligation of Section 1(1)(b) cannot be met as Essex Police does not hold all the information requested in a format that allows it to be retrieved within the time and cost limits of FOI.

When responding to a request for information under the terms of the FOIA, a public authority is not obliged to provide information if the authority estimates that the cost of the retrieval of the information requested would be in excess of £450 (equivalent to 18 hours work).  The costs criteria relates to a request in its entirety, which means that if we cannot retrieve all of the information requested within the costs limit, we are not obliged to retrieve any of the information requested.

Section 12(1) of the FOIA states that a public authority is not obliged to:

“…comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.”

The following explanation outlines the difficulty Essex Police has in answering your request:

In relation to prosecution data, Essex Police are unable to accurately extract the level of detail in relation to your request for the requested periods from our current systems.  Essex Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not primarily for the production of statistical information for FOI responses.  Essex Police do not record prosecution data on the Athena Custody system (this is held by the Crown Prosecution Service).  This request would entail manually extracting the requested data, manually reviewing each record one by one to establish if there was a charge and then cross referring on the Police National Computer (PNC) to establish the outcome and conviction data.  To establish if information is held would, therefore, exceed the time and cost limits under the FOIA and would qualify as the creation of data as the results cannot be processed by means of purely sorting or filtering data sources or running a database query tool. There is no requirement under the act to create data purely to answer FOI requests.

Consequently, and to this extent, Essex Police are exempt from the duty to provide information you have requested under the provisions of Section 12(1) of the FOIA.  Therefore, and in accordance with Section 17(1) of the FOIA, this communication must act as a refusal notice to provide all of the information that could be interpreted as being captured by this part of your request.

Having said that and in an effort to assist, although excess cost removes the force’s obligations under the FOIA, Essex Police can confirm the following:

Caveats: 

The data is correct as at 18 January 2022.

Please note that Stalking was not a recordable crime for the entire period requested, therefore, the data provided is from April 2014 until November 2021.

Essex Police do not record prosecution data on the Athena Custody system (this is held by the Crown Prosecution Service), we have, however, provided the number of Charged Outcomes:

Type 1 - Charged/Summonsed/Postal Requisition

Type 1A - Charged/Summons - alternate offence. Offender has been charged under the alternate offence rule.

 

The number of reported incidents involving males and females as victims of stalking.

Grand Total	14	73	117	169	557	764	2081	3390	7165
Gender	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	Grand Total
Female	14	67	101	143	461	647	1629	2594	5656
Male		6	15	26	94	110	430	758	1439
Not Recorded			1		2	7	22	38	70

 

The number of charges involving males and females as victims of stalking.

Grand Total	6	20	17	38	69	100	202	180	632
Gender with a Charged Outcome	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	Grand Total
Female	6	20	14	37	65	88	184	166	580
Male			3	1	4	11	12	12	43
Not Recorded						1	6	2	9

 

Every effort is made to ensure that the data provided by Essex Police is accurate and complete.  However, Essex Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not for the purposes of providing data to answer specific FOI enquiries.  Please note although data can be extracted from a number of sources via database queries, the results may be subject to inaccuracies.  Care should be taken to understand our return when considering the interpretation or further use of the data.

The Force Information Management Board chaired by the Deputy Chief Constable has oversight of the Force wide programme of work to improve the quality of Force data.  This work has identified data quality leads in all key areas of the business including the Crime and Public Protection Command.  Liaison between the Force Data Quality Team and the Crime and Public Protection Command lead for data quality will identify and resolve issues through a variety of mechanisms to ensure regular and appropriate supervisory oversight.