FOI ref: FOI/2023/4924
You asked
Please could you tell me the frequency of violent crimes committed against trans individuals directly compared with those same crimes committed against the general population. Over the last 5 to 10 years would be ideal.
We said
Thank you for your request,
We started asking about respondents' gender identity in October 2019 on the self-completion module of the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). We do not hold information prior that date.
The most recent publication regarding the prevalence of total crime broken down by gender identity can be found in the associated download 'Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2020'. The data set shows the prevalence of total crime broken down by gender identity based on 6 months of CSEW data for the year ending March 2020. Sheets D1 and D3 show the breakdown by gender identity in column F.
As violent crime is relatively rare, we were unable to publish prevalence estimates by gender identity because there were too few cases within those who identified as trans to produce reliable estimates. In addition, our disclosure policy is such that we do not generally release estimates for sensitive outcomes, such as violence or domestic abuse, based on less than three cases because of the potential for individuals to be identified. In this case, we do believe that the information is identifiable.
We are therefore unable to release the number of violent crimes specifically committed against trans men and trans women. Section 39 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (SRSA) renders it a criminal offence to disclose information held by the Statistics Board for statistical purposes that would identify an individual, including those who are deceased. As we are prohibited by law from publishing statistics in which individuals can be identified, Section 44(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) applies.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic we had to switch from in-home face-to-face interviewing to telephone- based interviewing. We were unable to collect data on gender identity via the Telephone-operated crime survey for England and Wales (TCSEW) as this information is gathered through the self-completion module of the survey which had been suspended for the CSEW. The face-to-face CSEW has now restarted and estimates of crime by gender identity are planned to be published alongside our year-ending March 2023 Crime in England & Wales publication. The level of detail we will be able to publish will be dependent on sample sizes.
If you have any crime-related queries in the future, please email crimestatistics@ons.gov.uk and we will endeavour to help.