2022/24987 - Rape Allegations

REQUEST

The information I am requesting concerns figures from your constabulary/force. As such could you please provide the following separately for the years 2016-2017, 2017-2018, 2018-2019, 2019-2020 and finally 2020-2021.

I am requesting for the above mentioned years, separately and itemised:

 

1, Total number of Rape allegations reported.

2, Total number of arrests made in connection with the allegations of Rape.

3, Total number of individuals either charged or remanded from Rape allegations.

4, Total number of convictions from those either charged or convicted in relation to Rape allegations.

5, Total number of Rape allegation cases that your force did not present to the Crown Prosecution Service.

6, Total number of Rape cases that the Crown Prosecution Service pursued but the alleged victim dropped the charges.

7, Total number of alleged Rapists who have been linked/accused previously and if possible, the number of times they have been separately accused.

 

RESPONSE

 

Please note that QlikView only provides information for January to March in 2017 and has no information for 2016.

 

1, Total number of Rape allegations reported.

 

Financial year	Recorded rape offences and reports
2017 - 2018	559
2018 - 2019	764
2019 - 2020	646
2020 - 2021	495
Total	2464

 

 

Please note that the data provided above is based on the number of rape offences and rape reports recorded in each financial year. This means the data is based on recorded data, so the dates are based on what the force recorded the report/offence and not the date of the actual offence. In some cases, the offence may have taken place historically but has now been reported.

 

 

2, Total number of arrests made in connection with the allegations of Rape.

 

Please note the number of arrests for the time periods cannot be directly linked to the data supplied in question one.

 

The number of arrests is based on custody footfall – this does mean that if a person is arrested for multiple rape offences they will only be counted once as they were arrested once. If they were arrested multiple times for a rape offence, then they will be counted each time they were arrested. An arrest may come any length of time after the offence was reported so may be in different years. This does mean the rape reports data and custody data cannot be directly compared. Additionally, question one covers reports not just recorded crime which again means that data in question one and two cannot be directly compared.

 

Rape offences were searched on the custody data and the following offences are included in the number of arrests

• Rape a woman 16 years of age or over
• Rape a female under 16
• Rape a boy aged 13 / 14 / 15 years of age
• Rape a girl aged 13 / 14 / 15
• Attempt to rape a woman 16 or over
• Aid abet the rape a girl under 13 by a male
• Rape a girl under 13
• Rape of a boy under 13 - SOA 2003
• Attempt rape of a girl under 13
• Rape a female aged 16 years or over
• Rape a man 16 or over
• Conspire to rape a woman 16 years of age or over
• Conspire to rape a girl 13 / 14 / 15 years of age
• Aid / abet / counsel / procure the rape of a female 13 / 14 / 15 years of age
• Attempt rape of a female 16 years or over
• Attempt to rape a girl aged 13 / 14 / 15 years of age
• Welsh - Rape a woman 16 years of age or over
• Conspire to rape a girl under 13
• Attempt rape of a boy under the age of 13
• Rape a male under 16
• Attempt to rape a man aged 16 or over

 

 3, Total number of individuals either charged or remanded from Rape allegations.

 

Please note the number of charges for the time periods cannot be directly linked to the data supplied in question one.

 

The number of charges is based on the number of arrests for a rape offence that led to a charge disposal. Again, this is based on footfall so a person may be charged for multiple offences at one time, and this will count as one charge. This data can be compared to question two but NOT question one.

 

4, Total number of convictions from those either charged or convicted in relation to Rape allegations.

 

We cannot provide this data as the data belongs to the courts who issue the convictions. The number of convictions can be obtained from the courts.

 

5, Total number of Rape allegation cases that your force did not present to the Crown Prosecution Service.

6, Total number of Rape cases that the Crown Prosecution Service pursued but the alleged victim dropped the charges.

 

To establish the information for questions 5 and 6, we would need to carry out a manual trawl for each record. We would need to manually check each record to see if it had a CPS form attached and then see if CPS pursued the case. However, this would exceed the timeframe of 18 hours to complete this request. A total of 2,464 rape offences and rape reports that have been reported between April 2017 and March 2021.  It would take approximately five minutes to review each individual record, which would equate to 205 hours of research. Therefore, a Section 12 Excess Cost exemption has been applied.

 

Section 12 – Excess Cost

 

The exemption applicable to the information you have requested for this question can be found at Section 12(1) of the Act and this refusal notice is issued under Section 17.

 

Section 12(1) “does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.” 

 

In the case of a police force, the appropriate limit is set at £450, which is calculated at £25 per hour (i.e., 18 hours). Gwent Police would have to conduct a manual search to find and extract the information for this question. This would take more than 18 hours of staff time therefore we are unable to answer this question and the exemption is engaged.

 

 

7, Total number of alleged Rapists who have been linked/accused previously and if possible, the number of times they have been separately accused.

 

The table below shows the number of people who have been linked to a rape offence as an offender on more than one occurrence and of those repeat offenders how many occurrences they were linked to. There were 175 persons who were linked as an offender on more than one rape offence occurrence between the dates April 2017 to March 2021. This does mean if they were linked as an offender before April 2017 this would not be picked up as a repeat.

 

Offender	Number of crimes
1	6
2	6
3	6
4	5
5	5
6	5
7	5
8	5
9	5
10	4
11	4
12	4
13	4
14	4
15	4
16	4
17	3
18	3
19	3
20	3
21	3
22	3
23	3
24	3
25	3
26	3
27	3
28	3
29	3
30	3
31	3
32	3
33	3
34	3
35	3
36	3
37	3
38	3
39	3
40	3
41	3
42	3
43	3
44	3
45	2
46	2
47	2
48	2
49	2
50	2
51	2
52	2
53	2
54	2
55	2
56	2
57	2
58	2
59	2
60	2
61	2
62	2
63	2
64	2
65	2
66	2
67	2
68	2
69	2
70	2
71	2
72	2
73	2
74	2
75	2
76	2
77	2
78	2
79	2
80	2
81	2
82	2
83	2
84	2
85	2
86	2
87	2
88	2
89	2
90	2
91	2
92	2
93	2
94	2
95	2
96	2
97	2
98	2
99	2
100	2
101	2
102	2
103	2
104	2
105	2
106	2
107	2
108	2
109	2
110	2
111	2
112	2
113	2
114	2
115	2
116	2
117	2
118	2
119	2
120	2
121	2
122	2
123	2
124	2
125	2
126	2
127	2
128	2
129	2
130	2
131	2
132	2
133	2
134	2
135	2
136	2
137	2
138	2
139	2
140	2
141	2
142	2
143	2
144	2
145	2
146	2
147	2
148	2
149	2
150	2
151	2
152	2
153	2
154	2
155	2
156	2
157	2
158	2
159	2
160	2
161	2
162	2
163	2
164	2
165	2
166	2
167	2
168	2
169	2
170	2
171	2
172	2
173	2
174	2
175	2