Victims, people proceeded against and suspects arrested across the MPS for drink spiking from 2017 to 2021

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.21.022386

I note you seek access to the following information:
1) For each of the last 5 calendar years, please provide the number of ‘drink spiking’ incidents recorded by your force. Beginning with January 2017, please break these figures down by month up to the most recent, available point.

Can you please do a keyword search of MO codes, using the terms, 'drink spiking', 'drink spike', 'drink spiked', ‘spiked drink', ‘drink interfered with’ and ‘drink drugged’.

If it is not possible to determine which offences in your records relate to ‘drink spiking’, then please focus on offences in the time period outlined that use the following Home Office crime codes:

- 005/10 (Administering poison so as to endanger life)
- 005/24 (Use of noxious substances or things to cause harm and intimidate)
- 005/05 (Administering drug with intent to commit, or assist in committing, an indictable offence)
- 008/02 (Administering poison with intent to injure or annoy)
- 088/05 (Administering a substance with intent)

2) For each of the last 5 calendar years, please provide the number of ‘needle spiking’ incidents recorded by your force. Beginning with January 2017, please break these figures down by month up to the most recent, available point.

Can you please do a keyword search of MO codes, using any combination of the terms ‘spike’/’spiked’, ‘spiking’ - or ‘laced/lacing’ - WITH EITHER ‘needle/s’, ‘syringes/s’, ‘injecting/ion/ed’, ‘puncture’ or ‘prick’.

If it is not possible to determine which offences in your records relate to ‘needle spiking’, then please focus on offences in the time period outlined that use the following Home Office crime codes (alongside search terms ‘needle’, ‘syringe’ or ‘injecting’ etc):

- 005/10 (Administering poison so as to endanger life)
- 005/24 (Use of noxious substances or things to cause harm and intimidate)
- 005/05 (Administering drug with intent to commit, or assist in committing, an indictable offence)
- 008/02 (Administering poison with intent to injure or annoy)
- 088/05 (Administering a substance with intent)

Can you please make sure the responses to Questions 1 and 2 are given as separate figures.

3) If it falls within the cost limit, please provide a breakdown of the gender and age of the complainants in Questions 1 and 2 - again, by month.

4) If it falls within the cost limit, please provide a breakdown of the number of arrests, charges and convictions for the incidents recorded in Questions 1 and 2 - again, by month.

Decision

I have today decided to disclose the located information to you in full.

Please find below information pursuant to your request above.

There is no specific offence classification, field, flag or other mechanism within CRIS that would allow an analyst to specifically identify any crime reports that involve the use of the words injection, needle and syringe. These words would be contained within the details of report which is not automatically recoverable and would require a manual search of each report. Therefore the data provided has been collated using the HO codes you have requested.