Thursday, 27 November 2008

Dear Mr Henderson,

FOI Reference No: FOI-20083/17297

I write in connection with your request for information dated 27 Oct 2008 and listed below.

Subject : Freedom of Information request - Homophobic hate crimes reported to police

Could you please inform me of

[1a] the total number of homophobic hate crimes reported to you in
the last year

[b] the last three years

[2a] the total number of those hate crimes that were reported to the Crown Prosecution Service in the last year

[b] the last three years.

Your request for information has now been considered and the information asked for under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 is as follows:

West Yorkshire Police are unable to obtain a full dataset of homophobic crime over the above periods, as our legacy crime information system, which covers the majority of the time period that you have asked for did not specifically flagged up such crimes. We can however provide the number of homophobic `incidents', which will include both recordable and non-recordable offences.

1a. Between April 2007 and March 2008, there were 240 homophobic incidents.

1b. Between April 2005 and March 2008, there were 807 homophobic incidents.

Please Note: It is important to stress that the figures quoted above relate to incidents that have been reported to the police as opposed to those which have subsequently been recorded as a crime. Specific data relating to homophobic crime is not recorded by West Yorkshire Police as there is currently no such specific crime in law. Any issues relating to homophobia would be the aggravating factors of another crime such as a person using abusive words or behaviour or an assault upon the person.

Our data indicates that in April of 2005 West Yorkshire Police were recording an average of 25 homophobic incidents each month. Since that date there has been a downwards trend with current recording levels showing an average of 18 incidents per month.

2a. & 2b. No information held. West Yorkshire Police are unable to provide figures in relation to files referred to the Crown Prosecution Service for charging decisions as we do not record this type of information, it remains the responsibility of the Crown Prosecution Service.

Please accept our apologies for the delay in responding to your request. This is due to a large volume of Freedom of Information request that are currently being with by West Yorkshire Police.

Police forces providing information do not use generic systems, nor are the procedures used for capturing the data the same. It should be noted that for these reasons this forces response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other response you may receive.

COMPLAINT RIGHTS

If you are not satisfied with how this request has been handled or with the information provided, please read the advice notice attached to this letter. If you do wish to take up your right of complaint, please remember to quote the reference number above in any future correspondence.

Yours sincerely

Janette Mitchell

Freedom of Information Project Officer

pp

Steven Harding

Head of Information Management

The West Yorkshire Police in complying with their statutory duty under sections 1 and 11 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to release the enclosed information will not breach the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. However, the rights of the copyright owner of the enclosed information will continue to be protected by law.  Applications for the copyright owner's written permission to reproduce any part of the attached information should be addressed to The Force Solicitor, West Yorkshire Police Headquarters, PO Box 9, Laburnum Road, Wakefield WF1 3QP.