Drugs: Arrests
Home Department
Written answers and statements, 5 November 2009
Ashok Kumar (Middlesbrough South & East Cleveland, Labour)
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many drug-related arrests there have been in (a) England, (b) the North East, (c) the Tees Valley and (d) Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland in each year since 1997.
Alan Campbell (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Tynemouth, Labour)
The arrests collection held by the Home Office covers arrests for recorded crime (notifiable offences) only, broken down at a main offence group level, covering categories including drug offences.
Information on arrests for drug offences covering the years 2002-03 (previous years data not available) to 2007-08 (latest available) is provided in the following table. It is not possible to separately identify the number of ‘drug related’ arrests for other offence groups (such as violence against the person or sexual offences) from the information on arrests reported to the Home Office.
Arrests in Teesside and Middlesbrough south cannot be separately identified as the data reported to the Home Office are broken down by police force area level only.
Information for Scotland is a matter for the Scottish Executive and information for Northern Ireland is a matter for the Northern Ireland Office.
| Persons arrested for drug offences in selected areas, 2002-03 to 2007-08 | ||||||
| Area | 2002-03( 2) | 2003-04 | 2004-05( 3) | 2005-06 | 2006-07 | 2007-08 |
| England | 109,359 | 102,492 | 76,050 | 82,809 | 81,327 | 98,271 |
| North East Region(1) | 7,932 | 8,243 | 5,381 | 7,087 | 6,451 | 5,781 |
| Cleveland police force area | 1,970 | 1,818 | — | 1,470 | 1,130 | 1,211 |
| (1) The North East Region includes three police force areas; Cleveland, Durham and Northumbria. (2) Data for 2002-03 excludes Durham as they were unable to supply arrests data for that year. (3) Data for 2004-05 excludes Cleveland as they were unable to supply arrests data broken down by offence group for that year. | ||||||