Domestic abuse - 108/18

Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')

As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority (including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.

You asked:

Under the Freedom of Information Act could you please give me a breakdown of the number of reports of domestic abuse by year by year for the past five years, broken down per quarter year, up to January 2018, including:

2017/18, 2016/17, 2015/16, 2014/15, 2013/14 broken down by the gender of the perpetrator/accused?

 And, if possible, a break down by the age of the alleged perpetrator/accused?

 We contacted you to ask if you wanted crimes as well as incidents as your original request was based on incidents.  You responded and said ‘yes please’

 You then emailed us and said “Further to my FOI request sent on Tue 23/01/2018 at 16:11 I have been asked to clarify a couple of points. I have included points of clarification as follows:

 Q1-Q4 refers to Quarter 1 to Quarter 4. It is a statistical breakdown used  by some forces to cover four quarters of the year. If your force does not use such a break down please just send me the annual figures up to January 2018. Equally if your force does use a Q1-Q4 breakdown please send me the figures up to and including January 2018.

 I’ve been told some forces refer to domestic violence and some to domestic abuse. Where possible I would like to broadest category available. If your force records abuse and violence please break the figures down ie figures for abuse and figures for violence accordingly by year.

And please break the figures down in your response between recorded incidents (and or reports) and recorded crimes of domestic abuse/violence.

As per the original email the main breakdown I am looking for is the gender of the perpetrator.

In Response:

We have now had the opportunity to fully consider your request and I provide a response for your attention. Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Corporate Development Department of Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held by Northumbria Police.

 I am able to disclose the located information to you as follows.

The first two tables gives a gender and age breakdown for domestic violence records created between 01/04/2013 and 24/01/2018- these are attached to incidents. These records are created with a victim and a suspect and therefore those in the 'unknown' category are where the suspect gender or age is not known.

 The second two tables gives a gender and age breakdown for suspects associated with a domestic violence related crime which have been created between 01/04/2013 and 24/01/2018. These are any crimes which are associated with a domestic abuse incident and have a suspect attached. As above, those in the 'unknown' category are where the suspect gender or age is not known. As there may be multiple suspects for each crime and/or crimes without a suspect, we have provided a separate count of domestic violence crimes.

 All data is broken down by financial year and financial quarter.

 With the above in mind please see the attached document which answers your query in full.