§ Mr. CatonTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what percentage of violent crimes, in the most recently published figures, were crimes of domestic violence. [106779]
§ Mr. Charles ClarkeThe information requested is not available. Recorded crime figures are based on the legal definition of offences. The relationship of the victim and any alleged offender is not recorded.
In the 1998 British Crime Survey, it was estimated that 25 per cent. of the violent offences it addressed were domestic in nature. The most detailed information on domestic violence, collected in the 1996 British Crime Survey, is given in the Home Office Research Study No. 191 called "Domestic Violence: Findings from a new British Crime Survey self-completion questionnaire", which was published in 1999.