Rape - 357/19

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:

I would like to request information on recorded rape in the Northumbria region for the calendar years 2013-2018 and the end outcome, as per the counting rules if possible, such as victim withdrawal, not enough evidence, not in the public interest etc.  

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 attached with the below noted.

The data has been taken from the central database using the crime tables.

In April 2016 crime outcomes changed to better reflect the outcome of a crime.  Before that date if a crime was undetected there would be no outcome regardless of the amount of work that had been carried out.  This accounts for the number of crimes that are marked as undetected before April 2016, similarly there are some crimes that are still under investigation and have not yet been assigned an outcome, this accounts for the larger number of crimes in 2017 and 2018 that are marked as undetected.

If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would expect that you to take into consideration the factors highlighted above so as not to mislead members of the public or official bodies or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.