Dog Thefts (456A/21)
Request
I would like to make a request for information relating to dog thefts under the Freedom of Information Act.
1) Please could you tell me the number of dog thefts recorded by police by individual month, for the calendar years 2018, 2019 and 2020 (to the latest month available).
2) Could you also please tell me the number of outcomes for dog thefts recorded in the calendar years 2018, 2019 and 2020, and the outcome group. This would include: charged/summons, evidential difficulties (suspect identified; victim supports action), evidential difficulties (victim does not support action), further investigation not in the public interest, investigation complete (no suspect identified), not yet assigned an outcome, out of court (informal), out of court (formal), prosecution prevented or not in the public interest), responsibility for further investigation transferred to another body, taken into consideration.
3) If available, could you also please provide a count of dog thefts by breed in each year from 2018 to 2020.
If you are unable to provide monthly breakdowns, please provide the 2020 figures that are currently available, alongside figures for the corresponding period in 2018 and 2019 – for instance, if you have figures for January to November 2020, please provide figures for Jan-Nov in both 2018 and 2019.
Response
Please find attached our response.
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.