Stalking Offences and Outcomes 2014 to 2025

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Publication Number: 1380

FOI Number: 21479

Information Request

The conviction rate for stalking offences between 2018 and 2025. If possible, please provide the data on a yearly basis and indicate any trends or variations during this period.

FOI Duty

First Duty – Essex Police holds some of the information relating to your request

Second Duty – See below

Fact - It is not possible to extract and verify all the data in your request

Exemption - Section 12(1)

Refusal - Section 17(5) of FOIA

Reasoning – Essex Police are unable to provide a comprehensive data report to meet this request as the data is not available in a readily extractable format, nor is it held on a central log.

With regard to your question, Essex Police is unable to report on the conviction rate for stalking offences recorded between 2018 and 2025 as data on convictions is held by HM Courts & Tribunals Service. To attempt to answer this question would require manually cross-referencing each stalking offence recorded in the desired time period with the Police National Computer to ascertain if the offence ultimately resulted in a conviction, extracting any relevant data and collating it into a bespoke report.

To establish if information is held would, therefore, exceed the time and cost limits under the FOIA and would additionally 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.

Duty to assist – When refusing a request on cost (Section 12(1)/12(2)), outside of the act and in effort to assist we can provide the following

Essex Police can however provide information on the numbers of stalking offences by year and outcome type:

Caveat: The data is correct as at 27 February 2025

Note

- The results are based on all Offence Sub Sub Group ‘Stalking’ crimes Disposed between 2018 and 2025.

Outcome Type	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025	Grand Total
Charged/Summonsed/Postal Requisition	45	85	130	203	202	206	256	53	1180
Formal Action Against Offender is not in the Public Interest (Police)			1	2	2				5
Prosecution Prevented-Named Suspect Identified But Is Too Ill (Physical Or Mental Health) To Prosecute, or confirmed died either before crime reported or before enough evidence to charge	1	2	2	5	9	5	7	1	32
Prosecution Prevented-Named Suspect Identified But Victim Or Key Witness Is Dead Or Too Ill To Give Evidence			2		2	2	1	1	8
Evidential Difficulties Victim Based- Suspect Not Identified: Crime Confirmed But The Victim Either Declines Or Unable To Support Further Police Investigation To Identify The Offender	50	76	74	115	117	81	89	12	614
Named Suspect Identified: Victim Supports Police Action But Evidential Difficulties Prevent Further Action	94	146	454	1020	1105	794	770	114	4497
Named Suspect Identified: Evidential Difficulties Prevent Further Action: Victim Does Not Support (Or Has Withdrawn Support From) Police Action	205	311	955	1815	1561	1458	1466	262	8033
Prosecution Time Limit Expired: Suspect Identified But Prosecution Time Limit Has Expired	1	9	18	54	63	36	33	5	219
Investigation Complete; No Suspect Identified. Crime Investigated As Far As Reasonably Possible-Case Closed Pending Further Investigative Opportunities Becoming Available	54	64	56	103	94	85	98	32	586
Charged/Summons - alternate offence. Offender has been charged under the alternate offence rule.	13	18	36	56	83	63	65	11	345
Caution Youth			2			2			4
Further action resulting from the crime report will be undertaken by another body or agency subject to the victim (or person acting on their behalf) being made aware of the act to be taken	8	52	18	47	51	51	35	9	271
Further investigation resulting from crime report which could provide evidence sufficient to support formal action against the suspect is not in the public interest - police decision.						1	1		2
Diversionary, educational or intervention activity, resulting from the crime report, has been undertaken and it is not in the public interest to take any further action.		8	19	35	26	21	11	1	121
Caution Adult	3	5	21	55	52	50	29	6	221
Caution Adult - alternate offence. Offender has been given a simple caution under the alternate offences rule.	5		4	4	7	8	9		37
Offender has died			1			3			4
Community resolution (Crime)	10	13	9	10	10	5	8	1	66
Prosecution Not In the Public Interest (CPS)				4	3	3	1		11
(no outcome recorded)						1	4	1	6
Grand Total	489	789	1802	3528	3387	2875	2883	509	16262

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.

To further address your question, you may wish to contact HM Courts & Tribunals Service to see if they can provide data on the numbers of people convicted of stalking offences:

HM Courts & Tribunals Service - GOV.UK

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

FOI 16266 Response

In respect of your enquiry:

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

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.

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