FOI ref: FOI-2023-1381
You asked
I am looking to access any statistical information you may hold about arrests for prostitution offences between 1970 and 2000 in Britain. I am particularly interested in any statistics that are broken down by race/ethnicity, and region of the country.
We said
Thank you for your request.
We publish police recorded crime figures for England and Wales which are supplied to us by the Home Office. In our data tables, prostitution offences fall under the 'Miscellaneous crimes against society' offence group. These are available at a regional level in our Police Force Area data tables. Unfortunately, we do not hold a breakdown of offence types under this group.
The Home Office publishes recorded crime figures for England and Wales by offence type, which can be found on the Police recorded crime and outcomes open data tables page. The offence reference table lists two prostitution offences which are included in the data tables, these are exploitation of prostitution (code 24) and soliciting for the purposes of prostitution (code 27).
The Home Office is responsible for data on arrests and will be better placed to answer any further queries you have regarding police recorded crime data, they can be contacted via their email address crimeandpolicestats@homeoffice.gov.uk.
If you have any crime-related queries in the future, please email crimestatistics@ons.gov.uk and we will endeavour to help.