FOI Reference: FOI/2021/3006
You asked
I am writing to make an open government request for all the information to which I am entitled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Please send me: Subject: Rape crimes recorded in England and Wales for year 2020. Request: may I be given the totals for the above crime, broken down by race of the perpetrator: White, black and Asian?
We said
Thank you for your request.
Unfortunately, we do not hold all the information you have requested. The ONS Centre for Crime and Justice publish figures on the levels and trends of crime in England and Wales primarily based on two sets of crime statistics: the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and police recorded crime data. Neither of these data sources collect information on perpetrators.
We do publish the number of rape offences reported to and recorded by police as part of our quarterly statistical bulletin Appendix tables. Table A4 provides the police recorded crime figures for all rape offences. The latest data we have for 2020 is the year ending December 2020 edition of the dataset, however we are unable to provide this total broken down by ethnicity of the perpetrator of the offence.
We have previously published some data on perpetrators as part of our most recent Sexual offending: victimisation and the path through the criminal justice system release in December 2018. The Home Office appendix tables provide police recorded sexual offences data for England and Wales, as well as data on arrests, cancelled crimes, crime outcomes and rape incidents. Table 7 of these tables details the number of persons arrested for all notifiable sexual offences by ethnicity up to the year ending March 2018. This table may be of interest to you, although this will not be indicative of total offences reported and recorded for the year ending March 2018, and we do not have this breakdown for rape offences. Unfortunately, this data is not available for the 2020 period requested.
The above data is collected by the Home Office who are responsible for collating all police recorded crime data and therefore may be better placed to assist you with this part of your specific request. The Home Office can be contacted via crimeandpolicestats@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk.
In addition to this, the Ministry of Justice collects data on those convicted of rape offences should this also be of interest to you. They can be contacted at ESD@justice.gov.uk.