Suicide Act (17420/19)
Request
(i) The number of recorded crimes, under Section 2(1) of the 1961 Suicide Act, for aiding and abetting suicide between 6th April 2012 and 30th July 2019. Can these be broken down by year please.
If helpful, it is my understanding that Section 2(1) of the 1961 Suicide Act may be recorded as code 76 `Aiding Suicide¿ by the Home Office.
(ii) For each recorded crime, was a suspect:
– Interviewed under caution
– Arrested
– Charged
(iii) What was the outcome of each arrest? If a suspect was released, what was the reason for release? ¿ e.g. Type 9 (Prosecution not in the public interest) etc.
(iv) Which (if any) of the recorded crimes under Section 2(1) of the 1961 Suicide Act are related to the words/phrases “Dignitas”, “terminal illness”, “terminally ill”, “assisted dying” , “assisted suicide”, or “euthanasia”?
Response
Please find attached our response, and note that we have extracted the data from both our crimes and arrests database.
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.