2022/25048 - Dognapping

REQUEST

Please can you tell me how many dognapping reports you've received during the last three years, broken down by individual years?

Can you also please break down the dognapping reports received each year by breed of dog?

RESPONSE

To find out how exactly how many dog thefts had been reported during this time period, a manual trawl would need to be completed on each offence which had been categorised as ‘Theft from the person’, or ‘All other theft’, as there is no filter for dog thefts.

There were 3423 offences recorded in 2021 alone which were categorised as ‘Theft from the person’ or ‘All other theft’. It would take 2 minutes to look through each record to obtain the information requested, which would take over 114 hours (2 minutes per record x 3423 records = 6846 minutes /60). This is over the 18-hour limit and therefore this request would be exempt.

However, to avoid this exemption, we have completed a keyword search on the crime summaries of offences which had been categorised as ‘Theft from the person’ or ‘All other theft’ using the term ‘dog’ within the time period 2019 - 2021. A manual trawl has then been completed to identify to relevant offences and to obtain the information requested where available. This data is correct as of 05/04/2022.

Please see the tables below: