Stalking: Reoffenders

Ministry of Justice written question – answered at on 20 July 2022.

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Photo of Steve Reed Steve Reed Shadow Secretary of State for Justice

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people were convicted of stalking offences after having been previously convicted for stalking in each of the last 30 years for which data is available.

Photo of Sarah Dines Sarah Dines Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice and Home Office)

Data showing how many people were convicted of stalking offences after having been previously convicted for stalking in each of the last 30 years for which data is available can be viewed in the table below.

Offenders convicted1 of a stalking offence2 who had a previous3 conviction for a stalking offence, England and Wales4, 2010 to 2021

Year5

Count

2010

1

2011

2

2012

2

2013

8

2014

13

2015

24

2016

20

2017

26

2018

44

2019

46

2020

80

2021

81

Source: Ministry of Justice extract of the Police National Computer (PNC)

1) Found guilty at court. Offenders given a caution have been excluded.

2) Stalking offences include racially or religiously motivated stalking without violence, racially or religiously motivated stalking with fear of violence; both under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and stalking involving fear of violence, stalking involving serious alarm/distress, stalking without fear / alarm / distress; all three under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.

3) Previous offences are counted as at the offender’s latest offence in each year.

4) England and Wales include all 43 police force areas in England and Wales plus the British Transport Police.

5) Each offender is only counted once in each year but may be included in the table multiple times if they were convicted in multiple years during the period.

6) The PNC is a large-scale administrative database that evolves over time. Despite carrying out validation on entry, prior to submission and within the statistical processes following extraction the data are subject to some inaccuracies inherent in any similar large-scale data recording system (e.g. mistyped data entries).

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