Non contact sexual offences - 1073/21

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:

Please can you provide information about non-contact sex offences.

The offences I would like information on are:

A. 88/9 exposure
B. 88/10 voyeurism
C. 88/12 additional voyeurism (up-skirting)

Please provide information for each of these offences, broken down by year from 2015 to present.
Please provide figures for the number of these offences reported / recorded – and figures for the outcomes of these offences.

For example:

Caution - youth
Caution - adult
Closed - no suspect identified
Closed - victim does not support action
Charged
Crime cancelled / no-crime (with reason).

If more convenient - I am happy for you to provide these details by outcome type numbers 1-22 where appropriate (eg Type 3 - adult caution - as per outcomes framework).
If possible, please additionally provide a monthly breakdown for the most recent 12 months for A. (exposure offences).
If possible to also provide this information for offences recorded as outraging public decency – but which were reported as ‘flashing’ or ‘indecent exposure’ – that would be very helpful.

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.

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

Data has been retrieved from the databases per the offence codes given.

The request requested a breakdown of crimes relating to outraging public decency if said offence related to flashing or indecent exposure. The total number of offences have been provided as it would not be possible to go through these to establish the nature of each specific offence in question within the permitted 18 hours. We have therefore provided as we are able to, to avoid this submission being refused under Section 12 .

 

Offence	Outcome	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021
Exposure	Caution adult	6	11	5	0	3	0	1
	Caution youth	1	0	0	1	0	0	0
	Charge/Summons	34	38	16	27	12	18	11
	Community resolution	0	1	1	1	0	0	0
	Evidential difficulties	19	37	34	34	32	33	17
	Investigation complete - no suspect identified	63	78	62	66	84	51	47
	Investigation not in public interest	0	1	8	0	0	1	2
	Not in public interest (police)	1	2	7	2	5	2	3
	Not stated	0	0	0	0	0	2	20
	Penalty notice	0	0	1	0	1	1	1
	Suspect too ill	2	1	6	8	6	3	1
	Victim declines or is unable to identify suspect	6	11	21	25	10	11	8
	Victim does not support police action	6	20	25	18	16	18	12
	Other agency action	0	1	0	0	0	1	2
	Taken into consideration	1	1	0	0	0	0	0
	Suspect under 10 years old	1	0	1	0	0	0	1
	Offender deceased	0	0	0	0	0	0	1
Voyeurism û installing equipment or constructing or adapting a structure/part of a structure with intention of enabling self/another to record a person doing a private act	Caution adult	1	1	2	3	1	0	0
	Caution adult alternative offence	0	1	0	0	0	0	0
	Caution youth	1	0	0	1	0	0	0
	Caution youth alternative offence	0	0	0	0	0	1	0
	Caution/Reprimand/Warn	0	0	0	0	1	0	0
	Charge/Summons	8	5	5	5	1	5	1
	Community resolution	2	0	0	1	0	0	0
	Evidential difficulties	5	3	8	13	12	10	7
	Investigation complete - no suspect identified	2	8	12	10	6	4	3
	Not stated	0	2	0	0	0	4	10
	Penalty notice	0	0	0	0	1	0	0
	Victim declines or is unable to identify suspect	0	0	2	1	1	2	1
	Victim does not support police action	1	1	7	8	5	4	4
Additional Voyeurism Offences (upskirting)	Caution adult	0	0	0	0	0	1	0
	Charge/Summons	0	0	0	0	0	1	0
	Evidential difficulties	0	0	0	0	3	1	1
	Investigation complete - no suspect identified	0	0	0	0	2	1	1
	Victim declines or is unable to identify suspect	0	0	0	0	1	0	1
	Victim does not support police action	0	0	0	0	1	0	0
Committing or conspiring to commit an act outraging public decency	Caution adult	10	9	3	4	6	3	2
	Caution youth	1	1	0	2	0	0	0
	Charge/Summons	34	25	30	23	17	21	5
	Charge/Summons alternative offence	0	0	0	0	2	0	0
	Community resolution	1	1	0	0	0	0	0
	Evidential difficulties	25	12	15	22	22	25	8
	Investigation complete - no suspect identified	37	59	53	49	48	48	18
	Investigation not in public interest	0	1	2	0	1	1	1
	Not in public interest (police)	2	0	1	2	4	3	0
	Not stated	0	0	0	1	0	0	4
	Penalty notice	0	1	1	0	1	0	0
	Suspect too ill	1	4	3	1	1	2	3
	Victim declines or is unable to identify suspect	6	7	11	9	6	14	7
	Victim does not support police action	0	10	9	10	6	8	1
	YOT triage	1	1	0	1	0	0	0

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.