Vagrancy Act (896A/20)
Request
The number of people a) arrested b) charged under the Vagrancy Act 1824 in each calendar month January 2019 to September 2020 inclusive.
We clarified with you on 19th October:
Your response was (dated 19th October 2020):
Thanks for your response. If you already have data easily retrievable that goes up to 10 September then that would be sufficient.
So to clarify my request, please provide:
The number of people a) arrested, and b) charged under the Vagrancy Act 1824 in each calendar month, from 1st January 2019 to 10th September 2020
Response
The previous data as mentioned was in financial years and not broken down into months, so we did re run the search for you as per your original request. With the following data, this is up to the end of September 2020.
| Arrests | ||
| Calendar Years | Arrest Date | Grand Total |
| 2019 | Jan | 6 |
| Feb | 8 | |
| Mar | 19 | |
| Apr | 7 | |
| May | 5 | |
| Jun | 5 | |
| Jul | 3 | |
| Aug | 5 | |
| Sep | 5 | |
| Oct | 6 | |
| Nov | 5 | |
| Dec | 9 | |
| 2020 | Jan | 7 |
| Mar | 1 | |
| Apr | 1 | |
| May | 3 | |
| Jun | 5 | |
| Jul | 3 | |
| Aug | 3 | |
| Sep | 8 |
| Charged | ||||
| Calendar Years | Arrest Date | Charged | Postal Charge/Requisition | Grand Total |
| 2019 | Jan | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| Feb | 6 | 6 | ||
| Mar | 9 | 1 | 10 | |
| Apr | 4 | 3 | 7 | |
| May | 4 | 4 | ||
| Jun | 4 | 4 | ||
| Jul | 2 | 2 | ||
| Aug | 2 | 2 | ||
| Sep | 5 | 5 | ||
| Oct | 2 | 2 | ||
| Nov | 2 | 2 | ||
| Dec | 1 | 1 | ||
| 2020 | Jan | 6 | 6 | |
| Mar | 1 | 1 | ||
| May | 1 | 1 | ||
| Jun | 1 | 1 | ||
| Jul | 1 | 1 | ||
| Aug | 1 | 1 | ||
| Sep | 5 | 5 | ||
| Total | 58 | 7 | 65 |
The other data mentioned are some published figures from a previous FOI which were not in the same format as your request but you may find useful. The published request is data for financial years and does not cover all the dates you require. We hope this also helps.
https://foi.west-midlands.police.uk/vagrancy-act-offences-2016-sept-2020/
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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