Mental Health - 247/23

Date Responded 21 February 2023

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:

Could you please provide answers to the questions below for the years 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 —

1a. How many incidents were recorded, each year?

1b. How many of these incidents were tagged as involving mental health, each year?

2a. How many crimes were recorded, each year?

2b. How many of these crimes were tagged as involving an element of mental health, each year?

3a. If possible, please let us know what is included in the term (or meant by the term) ‘incidents’?

3b. Does ‘incidents’ include both crimes and non-crimes?

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.

1a & 1b:

Year	Incidents	MH incidents
2017	428,567	8,182
2018	431,530	8,759
2019	424,117	10,148
2020	437,142	9,849
2021	433,660	12,478
2022	447,669	21,100

2a & 2b:

Year	Crimes	MH Crimes
2017	147,973	613
2018	157,684	701
2019	150,113	747
2020	132,531	593
2021	130,867	1,210
2022	140,186	3,125

3a. An incident is a record of a report of a communication with the Police, but note that it does not necessarily mean a crime has occurred. For example, it could be that an individual has reported a theft but upon investigation it has not turned out to be so (perhaps they had just misplaced the item and not realised). An incident has been recorded, but not a crime.

3b. Yes, incidents includes both crimes and non-crimes.

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.

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.