In November 2022 we collaborated with BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour to report the rate of reported stalkers charged by police had almost halved over the previous two years, according to government data.
Figures analysed by the BBC’s Shared Data Unit found charging rates had fallen from 11% to 6% from 2020-2022, a continuing year-on-year trend from 2014-15 where it was as high as 37%.
According to the data, a third of all cases were dropped because of difficulties in collecting evidence - despite the victim supporting action.
More than half of reported cases ended with the victims not supporting further action.
Of the cases that did end up in court, the conviction rate for stalking offences was 66% across England and Wales.
The use of Stalking Protection Orders (SPOs) by police forces had also fallen in the previous year. Freedom of Information request responses from 27 of the 42 police forces in England and Wales showed a 35% drop in the number of SPOs applied for - with 310 fewer applications.
SPOs were designed to allow police to act at the earliest opportunity, and breaching one was a criminal offence that could land the offender with up to five years in prison.
Despite the drop in applications, the number of orders granted by courts had risen over the same time period, with 382 more granted in 2022 compared to 2021.
Meanwhile the number of stalking incidents reported to the police had more than tripled, jumping from 32,000 cases in England and Wales three years previously to nearly 100,000 in 2021-22.
The Home Office said the rise was linked to a change in the way stalking offences were recorded.
The data was revealed as specific stalking legislation was introduced in England and Wales ten years earlier (November 25).
This story was used for an hour-long special on stalking, broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour on Monday, November 21 at 10am. It was also used by regional BBC programmes for their 6.30pm reports in Bristol, Southampton and Oxford.
We provided data for every police force in England and Wales from two different sources:
We analysed police recorded crimes outcomes data to provide rates for three different outcomes. Together, these three outcomes covered more than 90% of all reported stalking cases. They were:
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Charged/summonsed
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Evidential difficulties - the victim does support action
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Evidential difficulties - the victim does not support action
Other outcomes included in the source data are listed below. Given the low percentage attributed to each outcome in the below list, we did not include them in our final data:
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Diversionary, educational or intervention activity, resulting from the crime report, has been undertaken and it is not in the public interest to take any further action.
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Further investigation to support formal action not in the public interest – police decision
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Investigation complete – no suspect identified
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Prosecution prevented or not in the public interest
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Responsibility for further investigation transferred to another body
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Taken into consideration
We also did not include any reports that had yet to be assigned an outcome in the data.
We analysed Ministry of Justice data (Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly: December 2021 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)) to get a conviction rate for stalking offences that did end up in court. We also provided the results of a Freedom of Information request to every police force in England and Wales. Of the 42 forces, 27 responded at the time of publication.
We asked each police force to provide us with the number of Stalking Protection Orders they had applied for on behalf of victims and the number of such orders granted by the courts.
This was a repeat of an FOI we did the previous year, and we included both years worth of data for comparison, and to see whether the totals had risen or fallen.
You can access the data through our web page for this story here.
You can also access it through a Google Sheet here.