You asked
Please could you send me any documentation or information regarding how the UK currently measures sex trafficking; including any surveys, police data and NGOs.
Do you collate all the data together? Or are there too many different methodologies used?
Additionally, are there any measures in place to improve the collation of data surrounding sex trafficking in the UK?
We said
Thank you for your request for information on sex trafficking.
We publish police recorded crime data on a quarterly basis, provided to us from the Home Office. Data includes the total number of ‘Trafficking for sexual exploitation’ offences (under offence code 72) recorded by police forces in England and Wales. This data will only reflect offences that have come to the attention of the police. The latest figures and a time series of the total number of sex trafficking offences are provided in Appendix Table A4 of Crime in England and Wales, year ending September 2016 which was published on 19 January 2017.
The link to Appendix Table A4 is below:
An explanatory note against this entry states that:
Modern Slavery (106) was introduced as a separate crime classification in April 2015. During April-July 2015 this classification included all of the offences that were previously recorded under category 72 (Trafficking for sexual exploitation) and some offences that were previously recorded under category 99 (Other indictable or triable-either-way offences). From 31 July 2015, a new set of Modern Slavery Act offences commenced, replacing all the offence codes previously listed under this classification.
This accounts for the significant reduction in the ‘Trafficking for sexual exploitation’ figures recorded from Apr’15 to March ’16 as the data becomes more specific to this particular crime.
Unfortunately, we do not hold any further information on ‘Sex trafficking’. What information is available is provided to us from the Home Office through police recorded crime. There are currently no plans in place for further improvement in the collation of this dataset that we are aware of at this time. Data for Scotland and Northern Ireland is published separately, please see links below.
Police recorded crime for Northern Ireland and Scotland
http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics
For future reference, you do not need to use a Freedom of Information request to ask for data. It is usually quicker to simply email us at CrimeStatistics@ons.gov.uk and we will endeavour to help. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to ask.