Andrew Murrison – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Murrison on 2016-02-23.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what information police forces hold on the (a) nationality and (b) ethnicity of those (i) arrested for (ii) convicted of sexual assaults against women.

Mike Penning

Under the annual data requirement (ADR), police forces are required to submit data to the Home Office on the ethnicity and sex of persons arrested for sexual offences. These data cannot be broken down to identify the number of arrests for sexual offences against women. Data on the nationality of persons arrested are not collected centrally.

Police forces hold a range of personal information on the Police National Computer (PNC) and local police databases on those arrested and convicted of any offence, including sexual assaults against women.

Additionally, the personal information of anyone cautioned or convicted for a sexual offence listed in Schedule 3 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, including sexual assault, is held on the police dangerous persons’ database, Violent and Sex Offender Register (ViSOR).