Data held concerning rape from April 2017 to 2022

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.23.031235

I note you seek access to the following information:

“I am again requesting data held concerning rape outcomes. By rape I refer to the specific offences 19C, 19D, 19E, 19F, 19G, 19H, 19J and 19K. I would like data provided by financial year beginning quarter 1 of 2017/18 and ending quarter 2 of 2022/23 and I would like to know about crimes based on when a crime outcome was recorded, not the crime itself (so please exclude all cases where an outcome has not yet been assigned).

Please tell me:
a). How many type 1A outcomes (a charge or summons for an alternative offence) were recorded in the financial year for rape crimes
b) Of the alternative charge outcomes (1A), please tell me for each crime the actual offence(s) the suspect was charged with and that justified the recording of the type 1a outcome, eg charged with assault, charged with sexual activity with a child. For this breakdown please use Home Office offence codes and descriptions outlined here, and also retain the financial year information.

For both these questions, please provide separate counts for each of the rape offences specified above (19C, 19D etc).

The resulting data I am asking for should allow me to see, for instance, that X number of rape offence outcomes recorded in Q2 of 2020/21 resulted in a charge/summons for an alternative offence, and that of X, Y were for assault, Z were for causing sexual activity without consent, etc.

Please provide the data in a spreadsheet format. A suitable format may include the following column headers:
For question b):
• financial year
• name of offence recorded (eg rape 19C,)
• count that resulted in a charge for an alternative offence (outcome 1A)
• name of that alternative offence

Please ensure that, if there are multiple charges in one case, that these are grouped together so that I may see the totality of charges brought in each case.

For instance, if in two separate 19c rape offences the suspect was charged with sexual assault in the same year, this could be reported as follows:

financial year: xx
name of offence: 19c - rape of a female aged 16 and over
name of alternative offence charged: sexual assault on a female aged 13 and over
count: 2

But if in one of these cases there were multiple charges, the information should be readable as follows:

financial year: xx
name of offence: 19c - rape of a female aged 16 and over
name of alternative offence charged: 20a - sexual assault on a female aged 13 and over
count: 1

financial year: xx
name of offence: 19c - rape of a female aged 16 and over
name of alternative offence charged: 20a - sexual assault on a female aged 13 and over, breaching a restraining order
count: 1

Note on the new request:

Since April 2017 it has been mandatory for police forces to report data on type 1a outcomes to the Home Office, for its aforementioned police recorded crime database. The count of type 1a offences is not published publicly, however I have retrieved this through an FOI to the Home Office. This shows that between October 2020 and September 2022, the Met Police told the Home Office it had recorded a type 1a outcome for rapes 45 times. (This is the information I have asked the Met Police in question a) of my FOI, and while I already have this information from the Home Office I have asked for it from the Met Police too since I am all too aware that the data the Home Office holds can often be different to the data police forces themselves hold or extract for requestors at any one time.

I have no doubt that in order to provide me with the details of the actual offences that suspects were charged with in rape offences that ended with a type 1a outcome a manual review may be required. However since there are only 45 relevant offences, according to the Home Office data, I trust you will agree this can be comfortably carried out within the cost limitations.

Arguments pre-empting refusal to disclose:

I do not agree with the position you set out in your previous reply that reporting small numbers for rape and sexual assault offences would constitute personal information or make individuals identifiable.

In my initial request I asked for data on crime outcomes. The information I requested was limited to the following details:
1) calendar quarter the outcome was recorded,
2) calendar year the outcome was recorded,
3) name/code of the crime recorded (ie 19c, 19d, 19e, 19f, 19g, 19h, 17a, 17b, 20a, 20b),
4) the outcome type recorded - for instance, charge/summons, caution, charge/summons for alternative offence etc, and
5) in cases where the outcome was a type 1a (charged/summonsed with alternative offence), the name of the actual offences charged

The open reporting of crime data is a well established practice. Every three months the Home Office publishes data (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-recorded-crime-open-data-tables) on police recorded crime for every police force in England and Wales, using crime and outcomes data supplied to it by police forces themselves - including the Metropolitan Police. No data suppression is applied to this database in the case of small numbers. I draw your attention to the latest available figures for the 2022/23 (*see excel doc attached) year by way of example, where you will find, at my count (of the metric 'Force outcomes for offences recorded in quarter'), 22,925 rows in which there was 1 instance of a given outcome type for a given crime in a given police force area for a given quarter. For London Met, for instance, I can easily see that in quarter 1 of 2022/23 there was 1 instance of an outcome being recorded for a crime of 'Rape of a female aged 16 and over' where the outcome was logged as 'Prosecution prevented - suspect too ill'. There is no question here clearly that the small number (1) means that data about crimes recorded constitutes personal information or renders people identifiable.

In my request I have asked for nothing that could reasonably be regarded as identifying personal information - no sex, no age, no ethnicity, no specific location and no specific details of the crime or persons involved. If you look at the list from 1-5 at the top of this email, only detail number 5 is of a different nature to data already published routinely by the Home Office (and indeed supplied to me in previous FOI responses I have received from the Metropolitan Police). However, detail number 5 is still simply depersonalised information about the name of the crime a suspect has been charged with, just as is the case in the aforementioned police recorded crime database with detail number 3. I fail to see how this could constitute personal information, and it is no different in principle to reporting that an outcome was a charge against any given offence, as it would be assumed in such cases that the crime that has been charged is the one It makes no material difference to the question of whether it is personal or identifying information simply by it being an alternative offence that led to a charge.

Small numbers in and of themselves are not, I believe, adequate justification for withholding information. Instead, the police force must consider whether the information I have requested is truly information that is a) personal information and b) whether the individual(s) involved risks being identified. I draw your attention to a relevant first tier tribunal decision which considered the suppression of small numbers
(http://informationrights.decisions.tribunals.gov.uk/DBFiles/Decision/i1995/Miller,%20Claire%20EA-2016-0265%20(20.04.17).pdf and the Upper Tribunal decision which upheld the decision that individuals would not be identified if the small numbers were disclosed. (Information Commissioner v Miller – GIA/2444/2017 (EA/2016/0265). This case has previously been cited by the ICO while arbitrating on complaints in which public bodies have sought to claim that small numbers render information as personal information. I would ask in this instance that the Met police please sets out an argument demonstrating how it reasonably believes that persons may be identified from the specific information I have requested, or how that data constitutes personal information, without relying on the fact that there are small numbers involved alone.”

Decision

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

Please find below information pursuant to your request above.

Please find below a spreadsheet in which the requested information has been provided.

DUTY TO ADVISE AND ASSIST
Under Section 16 of the Act, there is a duty to advise and assist those that have made, or intend to make, a request for information. In accordance with this duty, I can confirm that the MPS publishes information about various types of crime on its website. I have provided a link to this information below.

MPS Website: Stats and Data

It may also assist you to note that the MPS proactively publishes all disclosures made in response to requests made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 on its Publication Scheme. I have provided a link to this section of the MPS website below.

MPS Publication Scheme

The MPS Publication Scheme can be searched using keywords and may accordingly hold other information that is of interest to you.