FOI Ref: FOI/2021/3422
You asked
- I would like the latest data on domestic abuse in lockdown as I understand there has been a rise.
- I would like to see if this is the case across all communities.
We said
Thank you for your request.
The Office for National Statistics publish data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales and police recorded crime.
The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) provides a more reliable measure of long-term trends in domestic abuse, sexual assault, stalking and harassment. Questions related to these offences had to be suspended with the move to telephone interviewing from May 2020. Due to the face-to-face survey being suspended due to the pandemic we do not hold any estimation of domestic abuse past the year ending March 2020, which uses data from Apr-19 to Mar-20. Therefore, we do not hold any breakdowns by ethnicity for the lockdown period you have requested.
However, the most recent police recorded crime data published in our quarterly bulletin Crime in England and Wales: year ending June 2021, shows that 846,235 offences were flagged as domestic abuse related in the year ending June 2021. More information can be found in the domestic abuse section of the quarterly bulletin.
Police recorded crime data does not provide any information on victims, it can provide us with a breakdown of domestic abuse flagged offence by offence type as seen in table 12, therefore we do not hold any breakdown of domestic abuse offences by communities (be that region or ethnicity).
A publication titled Domestic abuse during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, England and Wales November 2020 provided the first initial insight into domestic abuse during the pandemic, using indicators from a range of data sources to assess the impact or coronavirus on domestic abuse in England and Wales.
Additionally, the Domestic abuse in England and Wales: overview: November 2021 provides more recent data on domestic abuse from both police forces and other sources.
For further enquiries regarding our crime data, please email crimestatistics@ons.gov.uk.