Tom Blenkinsop – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tom Blenkinsop on 2016-07-21.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many reports of sexual offences Cleveland Police received in each of the last five years; and what proportion of those reports led to prosecutions.

Brandon Lewis

The number of sexual and violence against the person offences recorded by Cleveland police from 2011/12 to 2015/16 are given in the table.

The Home Office does not hold data on the number of prosecutions resulting from offences recorded by the police. Information on crimes assigned a charge or summons outcome is available from April 2014, when data on outcomes were first collected linked specifically to their associated crimes. Previously, outcomes data supplied by forces related to the volume recorded regardless of when the crime was committed. The new method of collection was implemented to provide greater transparency and highlight how each crime recorded in any period is resolved by the police.

The table shows the proportion of sexual and violent offences that resulted in a police charge or summons in 2014/15 and 2015/16. In addition, it shows the proportion of each offence group that has not been assigned an outcome. This is important to note, in particular for sexual offences, because length of investigations mean that the most recent year has more crimes that have yet to be assigned an outcome than the previous year.

Not all charges or summonses will lead to a prosecution, the Ministry of Justice hold and publish data on prosecutions.