§ Margaret MoranTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department in how many cases power of arrest has been used in cases involving domestic violence in each UK region in the last 12 months for which figures are available. [88312]
§ Hilary BennInformation from the Best Value Performance Indicators for the police service for April 2001—March 2002 on the number of people that have been arrested for domestic violence is as follows.
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Police Force Domestic violence persons arrested Avon and Somerset 1,499 Bedfordshire 1,182 Cambridgeshire N/A Cheshire 844 City of London 17 Cleveland 1,207 Cumbria 812 Derbyshire N/A Devon and Cornwall 2,808 Dorset 615 Durham 1,971 Dyfed-Powys 879 Essex 972 Gloucestershire N/A Greater Manchester 4,205 Gwent 401 Hampshire N/A Hertfordshire N/A Humberside 746 Kent 2,438 Lancashire 2,376 Leicestershire N/A Lincolnshire N/A Merseyside N/A Metropolitan Police 6,265 Norfolk 1,326 Northamptonshire 398 Northumbria 5,663 North Wales 1,889 North Yorkshire 648 Nottinghamshire N/A South Wales 2,179 South Yorkshire N/A Staffordshire 3,636 Suffolk 19 Surrey N/A Sussex 3,313 Thames Valley 583 Warwickshire N/A West Mercia N/A West Midlands 7,025 West Yorkshire 76 Wiltshire 1,125 England and Wales 57,117 N/A—Figures not available.
Domestic violence itself is not a criminal offence and offenders are charged under a number of different offences (assault, GBH etc). Police forces have to examine individual crime reports in order to identify these crimes, and to identify which resulted in arrests. It is expected that rollout of new IT should enable all forces to produce this data in due course.