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:
1. For each year, starting from 2015 to the present day, how many reports of human trafficking have you recorded?
2. For each report that was recorded how many people were recorded as victims in each case?
3. If it has been documented, the gender of the victims per report
4. For each report that was recorded how many offenders were charged as a result each year?
5. If it has been documented, the gender of the offenders that were charged per report.
In Response:
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.
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.
The data provided has been taken from the central database using the crime, victim and disposal tables. The following offences were searched for between the dates 01/01/2015 and 10/03/2021:
Trafficking into the UK for sexual exploitation
Trafficking within the UK for sexual exploitation
Trafficking out of the UK for sexual exploitation
Trafficking in prostitution
Trafficking people into the UK for the purpose of exploitation
Trafficking people within the UK for the purpose of exploitation
Trafficking people out of the UK
The data was then pivoted and filtered for duplicates in order to then offer a response to the request.
With all the above noted I am able to disclose the located information to you as follows. You should note that on this occasion we have considered no harm in disclosing, however this may not be the case should similar such requests be made in the future.
1. 2015 – 13 – there are no other recorded instances.
2. 1.
3. Male x 4 – Female x 9
4&5. Male x 1 – Female x 12.
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.
