Stalking, harassment, malicious communication and controlling/coercive behaviour from January 2017 to June 2022

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.22.025739

I note you seek access to the following information:

1: The total number of cyberstalking incidents recorded per calendar year from 2017 to 2021. Please provide an annual breakdown. If you can get 2022 data, can we have a breakdown of the first 6 months? For clarification, if you can use the ‘online’ tag and these offences:

Stalking
Harassment
Malicious communications
Controlling and coercive behaviour

2: Where possible, provide detail on each recorded incident (e.g harassment, stalking, stalking involving serious alarm/distress). For clarification, if you can give detail on offence type e.g. harassment. If you can get 2022 data, can we have a breakdown of the first 6 months? Please provide annual breakdown as per Q1

3: The number of cyberstalking incidents in which the perpetrator(s) is identified, per calendar year from 2017 to 2021. If you can get 2022 data, can we have a breakdown of the first 6 months? Please provide annual breakdown as per Q1

4: The number of individuals that have reported cyberstalking offences to your police force, per calendar year from 2017 to 2021. If you can get 2022 data, can we have a breakdown of the first 6 months? Please provide annual breakdown as per Q1

5: Please provide details relating to the outcome of the perpetrator referenced in Q3 (e.g charge, caution, fixed penalty, resolution).This information should be broken down per calendar year from 2017 to 2021 as per Q1. If you can get 2022 data, can we have a breakdown of the first 6 months?

6. Breakdown of towns and cities data for all questions. I know not all the police forces have cities so please breakdown into towns if this is the case.

7. Breakdown of age and gender for all questions.

Redifned Request:

These are the codes and if you can use the 'online' tag that would be great:

Stalking
008/65 - Stalking involving fear of violence, protection from Harassment Act 1997
008/66 - Stalking involving serious alarm/Distress
195/12 - Pursue course of conduct in breach of Sec 1 (1) which amounts to stalking
Harassment
Do you require all harassment offences which will include breach of Harassment
Injunctions, Breach of Restraining Orders as well as & quot;ordinary" harassment offences?
Malicious communications
008/72 – Malicious Communications with an ‘online’ flag.
Controlling and coercive behaviour
008/67 - Engage in controlling/coercive behaviour in an intimate / family relationship.

For question 2, yes please.

Decision

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

Please find below information pursuant to your request above.

In relation to the attached data, please note that this is reliant on officers classifying the crimes correctly and using the correct feature code when entering reports.

The MPS does not currently differentiate between offline stalking, online stalking or ‘cyberstalking’ for recording purposes.

In addition the MPS have no accurate measure as to how many stalking cases are offline only or cyber only, and many if not most stalking cases will probably contain elements of both.

Please note that an offence of Controlling and Coercive Behaviour may not be the main reason for a report being made but could be an additional charge and therefore this would not be not picked up in the data run on our system.