Stalking Complaints - 280/20

Date Responded 18 February 2020

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:

Number of stalking complaints made from 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 respectively
Number referred to clinic - from 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 respectively
Number of charges - from 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 respectively
Number of charges brought from referrals from clinic - from 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 respectively

After asking for clarification regarding “referred to clinic” you advised that you were under the impression each force referred charges to a stalking clinic

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, in part, by Northumbria Police.

I am able to disclose the located information to you as follows, however the following must be noted.

We have defined "stalking complaints" in combination with charges being brought to equate to crimes only.
We would not be able to query incidents in this way, as stalking and harassment fall under the same set of codes.
"Charges" in this case equates to a disposal of a charge, or a postal requisition to court.

1 & 3.

Year	Instances	Charges
2010	0	0
2011	0	0
2012	1	1
2013	11	8
2014	13	11
2015	12	4
2016	18	4
2017	430	68
2018	1203	172
2019	1161	123
Total	2849	391

2 & 4. No information held. Currently we do not have stalking clinics set up in the Northumbria Police force area.

Disclaimer

Due to the different methods of recording information across 43 forces, a specific response from one constabulary should not be seen as an indication of what information could be supplied (within cost) by another. Systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data. For this reason responses between forces may differ, and should not be used for comparative purposes.

The information we have supplied to you is likely to contain intellectual property rights of Northumbria Police. Your use of the information must be strictly in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) or such other applicable legislation. In particular, you must not re-use this information for any commercial purpose.