Embargoed: Police Data on Strangulation and Suffocation Offences
We requested data from the Home Office in 2023 pertaining to the number of strangulation and suffocation offences recorded by the police in the first year of strangulation and suffocation becoming a standalone offence (7th June 2022 – 6th June 2023). This request was made via the Freedom of Information (FOI) process.
Following the same FOI process, this report contains the data we have received from year 2 of the legislation (7th June 2023 – 6th June 2024).
This report presents a comparative analysis of the data obtained in year 1 and year 2*.
Key findings:
39,360 strangulation and suffocation offences recorded in 2023- 2024 compared to 23,817 recorded in 2022- 2023.
Evidential difficulties accounted for 70% of criminal justice outcomes with police in 2023- 2024 compared to 67% in 2022- 2023.
Reporting rate in each police force ranged from 24 to 111 reports per 100,000 people in 2023- 2024 compared to 23-98 in 2022-2023.
Where victim sex was known 77% were female and 23% were male in 2023-2024 compared to 81% females and 19% males in 2022-2023.
Over half (54%) of victim ethnicity for strangulation and suffocation offences was recorded as unknown by police in 2023- 2024.
*The data for 2023- 2024 included more police forces than in 2022- 2023.
Conclusions and recommendations
This report is timely, mirroring some of the key findings and recommendations from the recent report published by the Domestic Abuse Commissioner (DAC) Office, Shifting the Scales (January, 2025). Key issues such as data and accountability, multi-agency working and resourcing were highlighted as areas needing improvement to transform the criminal justice response to domestic abuse in the UK. From our research, at IFAS, we would agree that much needs to be done in order to improve data capture and reporting so that in the words of the DAC, “data from across the system is consistently and accurately gathered, integrated across the system, and readily accessible in order to drive transparency and accountability”.
Bernie Ryan, CEO of IFAS, says “The data fails to provide a clear picture on who might be more or less likely to report these types of offences. Although, at IFAS, we recognise that reporting to the police will be a choice only some victims/survivors may make, the criminal justice system is an important part of the whole system approach to preventing and responding to violence against women and girls. IFAS supports the government’s aims to halve violence against women and girls in a decade. However, without robust data to capture the true scale of the issue across different parts of the prevention and response system, including recognising who is impacted and the contexts in which these incidences are occurring, it will be impossible to accurately understand the experiences of victims and survivors. IFAS work has shown us that multi-agency scrutiny panels would significantly help to identify missed opportunities in the investigation of strangulation cases and provide much needed context to the data and what it tells us about victims/ survivors of strangulation and their experiences of the criminal justice system.”
IFAS are keen to encourage contact from police forces in England and Wales who would like to develop and better understand the data they hold on strangulation reports. Please do get in touch: contact@ifas.org.uk.
