BAME community victims of arson attacks recorded by the MPS 2018 to 2022

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.22.027852

I note you seek access to the following information:

Are members of BAME communities adversely represented amongst victims/potential victims of arson attacks?

Clarification: I emailed you asking you to provide a date range for this request.

You replied with the following:

Would it be possible for you to provide figures going back for five years please?

Decision

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

Please find below information pursuant to your request above.

This information has been disclosed to you in the spreadsheet provided alongside this notice.

Please note that the ethnicity of a victim is not a mandatory field in the Crime Reporting Information System (CRIS) so therefore the final table of ‘Unknown’ would be the victims of Arson where the ethnicity was not recorded which totals 1819 cases. It should also be noted that the term Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) is no longer used by the MPS. The MPS now, where possible, refers to the heritage of people. Where this is not possible, the MPS uses the term ‘Black, Asian and Multiple Ethnic Heritage’.

Further to this please note this data is compiled from Officer Defined Ethnicity which is ethnicity of the victim recorded by the reporting officer as opposed to Self-Defined Ethnicity which would be how the victim themselves defines their Ethnicity.