FOI 342342
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 342342
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 19th June 2024, clarified on 26th June 2024.
- Are you able to provide year on year data for the Home Office Crime Code 035/00 (Blackmail) recorded by your force between 01/01/2014 and 31/05/2024 inclusive.
- Are you then able to filter this data for the word “sextortion”.
- Are you able to filter this data for the words “learning disabilities” to see if the victim was in this category.
Please find below the response to your request:
Reply
West Mercia Police hold the information requested.
Caveat: To ensure the Force remains compliant with GDPR and MoPI regulations, certain MoPI 3 level data is automatically deleted from Force systems after a period of 6 years. As a result the data within this FOI will only date back 6 years to reduce confusion and the misinterpretation of data as records prior to 6 years will potentially not be complete or accurate
1.Are you able to provide year on year data for the Home Office Crime Code 035/00 (Blackmail) recorded by your force between 01/01/2014 and 31/05/2024 inclusive.
|
Calendar Year |
Number of Blackmail offences |
|
2018 (June-Dec) |
107 |
|
2019 |
178 |
|
2020 |
244 |
|
2021 |
427 |
|
2022 |
566 |
|
2023 |
776 |
|
2024 (Jan-May) |
258 |
|
Grand Total |
2,556 |
2.Are you then able to filter this data for the word “sextortion”.
|
Calendar Year |
Number of Blackmail offences |
|
2018 (June-Dec) |
1 |
|
2019 |
2 |
|
2020 |
5 |
|
2021 |
7 |
|
2022 |
15 |
|
2023 |
9 |
|
2024 (Jan-May) |
3 |
|
Grand Total |
42 |
3.Are you able to filter this data for the words “learning disabilities” to see if the victim was in this category.
|
Calendar Year |
Type of flag |
Number of Blackmail offences |
||
|
Learning disability (Incident Summary wording) |
Learning difficulty (Incident Summary wording) |
Learning difficulty (Vulnerable Indicator flag) |
||
|
2018 (June-Dec) |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
2019 |
3 |
3 |
0 |
6 |
|
2020 |
0 |
2 |
0 |
2 |
|
2021 |
0 |
2 |
1 |
3 |
|
2022 |
1 |
7 |
6 |
14 |
|
2023 |
1 |
2 |
12 |
15 |
|
2024 (Jan-May) |
1 |
2 |
1 |
4 |
|
Grand Total |
6 |
18 |
20 |
44 |
The data for Q2 & Q3 has been filtered from the results of Q1
The totals in Table 3 are for the number of offences not the number of victims. For clarification, as expected, there was one victim per offence but one person was a victim of multiple offences.
To note: there were no offences of sextortion where the victim was flagged as having a learning disability or difficulty.