Stalking (375A/21)
Request
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, please can you provide me with responses to the following:
1/ The monthly number of incidents (allegations or complaints) of stalking since 1st January 2018 up to and including the end of February 2021.
2/ The annual number of incidents (allegations or complaints) of stalking where the alleged victim was a child (aged under 18) in a) 2019 and b) 2020.
3/ The monthly number of arrests for stalking since 1st January 2018 up to and including the end of February 2021.
4/ The youngest age of a person alleging they were stalked since April 1st 2020 to date.
5/ The monthly number of arrests for domestic abuse-related incidents and crimes since 1st January 2018 up to and including the end of February 2021.
Response
Please find attached our response.
Please note that these data should be interpreted with caution. Comparing numbers of incidents/crimes can be misleading and does not necessarily indicate the likelihood of someone being a victim of crime. In addition, the number of incidents/crimes recorded in an area over a period of time can be influenced by a number of factors. Consequently statistics on incidents/crimes for one period may not necessarily be a good indicator of future incidents in that area.
Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.
If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.