Domestic Homicide (324A/22)
Request
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000/Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, I am writing to request anonymous information about domestic homicide offences (incorporating murder and manslaughter) recorded between 1st January 2015 and 31st December 2020 where the suspect/offender has claimed either:
- the killing was a mercy killing (i.e. that they were assisting the victim to die, that they killed them in an act of compassion);
- the killing occurred as part of a suicide-pact.
Domestic homicide is defined to reflect the statutory definition of domestic abuse as any killing perpetrated by an individual aged 16 or over where the victim is an intimate partner OR family member.
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.