Domestic Violence (898A/20)
Request
I would like to know:
- If there has there been an increase in domestic violence incidents that the police have had to deal with since the 23rd March this year to date on a week by week basis compared to the same period last year
- How have the police coped with this increase in domestic violence cases. Have they had to adapt their working practices in any way to address the increase which has been reported in the press, ie employ more staff or draft staff in from other departments
- Has the police received more funding since the 23rd March to date to deal with domestic violence
- What do they believe is the cause of the increase in incidents
- Was there any domestic violence homicides during this time (23rd March to date) and was there an increase in domestic violence homicides compared to the same period last year
- Was there an increase in more serious offences occurring compared to the previous year, within the same date span (23rd March to date)
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.