Drink spiking / Injections (1584A/21)

23 November 2021 | Incident and Crime Statistics

Request

Response

Please find enclosed our response.

Initially upon receipt of your original request the data you required was not in a retrievable format, so as a result we clarified with you and asked you to select the specific offences you desired.  However, since this last communication and now, a search has been developed which allows us to answer your original request.  So this FOI will answer all of the above request.

Keyword searches are notoriously unreliable, the reasons why searches using this method are not reliable include (but are not limited to) the following:-

1. a) Searches rely on the keywords being spelt correctly with no grammatical errors
2. b) Searches rely on the keywords actually being mentioned in the summary description of the record – if they are mentioned anywhere else within the record but not in the summary, then they will not feature in any results

However, I can confirm that the below data is based on several keyword searches and each incident data has been validated as being correct.

Q1: Could you tell me the number of drink spiking offences and spiking offences via injection that were recorded in the following time periods:

The 12 months to November 1, 2017 (1/11/2016 to 1 /11/2017)

 

 

Nov 2016	Dec 2016	Jan 2017	Feb 2017	Mar 2017	Apr 2017	May 2017	Jun 2017	Jul 2017	Aug 2017	Sep 2017	Oct 2017
1	1	0	1	5	6	3	2	3	3	2	3
Gender	Nov 2016	Dec 2016	Feb 2017	Mar 2017	Apr 2017	May 2017	Jun 2017	Jul 2017	Aug 2017	Sep 2017	Oct 2017
Female	1	1	1	3	2	2	2	2	1	2	2
Male	0	0	0	1	3	0	0	1	1	0	1
Not Specified	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0

 

No spiking by injection incidents were recorded during this period, it was all drink spiking.

 

 

The 12 months to November 1, 2018 (1/11/2017 to 1/11/2018)

 

Nov 2017	Dec 2017	Jan 2018	Feb 2018	Mar 2018	Apr 2018	May 2018	Jun 2018	Jul 2018	Aug 2018	Sep 2018	Oct 2018
4	7	2	4	4	10	7	5	4	5	8	7

 

 

Gender	Nov 2017	Dec 2017	Jan 2018	Feb 2018	Mar 2018	Apr 2018	May 2018	Jun 2018	Jul 2018	Aug 2018	Sep 2018	Oct 2018
Female	2	1	1	2	2	4	6	2	3	1	3	3
Male	0	4	1	1	0	4	1	2	1	4	3	3
Not Specified	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

 

No spiking by injection incidents were recorded during this period, it was all drink spiking.

 

The 12 months to November 1, 2019 (1/11/2018 to 1/11/2019)

 

Nov 2018	Dec 2018	Jan 2019	Feb 2019	Mar 2019	Apr 2019	May 2019	Jun 2019	Jul 2019	Aug 2019	Sep 2019	Oct 2019
3	7	8	2	5	11	3	11	6	11	7	6

 

Gender	Nov 2018	Dec 2018	Jan 2019	Feb 2019	Mar 2019	Apr 2019	May 2019	Jun 2019	Jul 2019	Aug 2019	Sep 2019	Oct 2019
Not Specified	3	6	4	0	1	7	2	3	2	3	4	2
Female	0	1	4	1	4	3	0	7	3	5	1	1
Male	0	0	0	1	0	1	1	1	1	2	2	3

 

No spiking by injection incidents were recorded during this period, it was all drink spiking.

 

The 12 months to November 1, 2020 (1/11/2019 to 1/11/2020)

 

Nov 2019	Dec 2019	Jan 2020	Feb 2020	Mar 2020	Apr 2020	Jun 2020	Jul 2020	Aug 2020	Sep 2020	Oct 2020
11	2	14	9	8	3	6	8	9	6	3

 

Gender	Nov 2019	Dec 2019	Jan 2020	Feb 2020	Mar 2020	Apr 2020	Jun 2020	Jul 2020	Aug 2020	Sep 2020	Oct 2020
Not Specified	4	2	3	7	8	1	3	2	0	2	1
Female	5	0	11	2	0	0	3	2	6	4	0
Male	2	0	0	0	0	2	0	4	3	0	2

 

No spiking by injection incidents were recorded during this period, it was all drink spiking.

The 12 months to November 1, 2021 (1/11/2020 to 1/11/2021)

 

Nov 2020	Dec 2020	Jan 2021	Feb 2021	Mar 2021	Apr 2021	May 2021	Jun 2021	Jul 2021	Aug 2021	Sep 2021	Oct 2021
6	8	4	1	5	6	13	11	20	18	31	67

 

Gender	Nov 2020	Dec 2020	Jan 2021	Feb 2021	Mar 2021	Apr 2021	May 2021	Jun 2021	Jul 2021	Aug 2021	Sep 2021	Oct 2021
Not Specified	1	1	1	0	3	1	1	1	0	1	3	2
Female	5	3	1	0	2	1	7	6	17	9	21	53
Male	0	4	2	1	0	3	3	4	3	7	7	9

 

During this period, West Midlands Police recorded 8 incidents of spiking by injection all of which were reported to the Police Force between 24^th and 31^st October 2021.

Further all 8 incidents of spiking by injection had victims that were female by gender.

Q2:

 

– 008/02 10 (Administering poison with intent to injure or annoy)

– 088/05 (10 (Administering a substance with intent)

– 005/05 10 (Administering drug with intent to commit indictable offence)

Drink spiking is not typically recorded as these offence codes, they are more commonly recorded as assaults, hence the low figures.  However, the figures for the above offences are:

Administer a poison with intent = 1 in Feb 2017, 3 in Dec 2017

Administer a substance with intent = 1 in July 2018

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.

 

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