FOI Reference: FOI/2021/3390
You asked
- Please can you supply me data on how many cases of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) were reported to you by each police force in the UK each month between 31 October 2016 and today's date, stratified, if possible, by age of alleged victim, police force and occupation of person making the report?
We said
hank you for your request.
On 01 April 2012 a new offence category was introduced - '8N Assault with injury'. This category subsumed offences previously counted as offence 8K. Whilst this new count incorporates incidents of female genital mutilation, it also includes other offences as well.
We have a count of all offences recorded under code 8N for England and Wales, however unfortunately, we cannot extract only the incidents of female genital mutilation as unfortunately we do not hold this breakdown of information. The latest police recorded crime data on offence 8N can be found in appendix table A4 of our most recent publication.
Although we publish some statistics based on police recorded crime data, the data is the responsibility of the Home Office. If you contact them directly, they may be able to provide you with the information you require. Their email address is CrimeandPoliceStats@homeoffice.gov.uk.
You may be interested to know that in January 2020, we published Child physical abuse in England and Wales: year ending March 2019 and related appendix tables. Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is covered in section 8 and uses the official statistics published by NHS Digital, which relates specifically to FGM in England only. These figures only cover those cases of FGM that come to the attention of healthcare providers. Appendix tables 41-50 provide various break downs of the NHS digital data from 2016-2019, including number of individuals identified by health services in England and the country where the FGM was undertaken.
The link to the latest FGM publication by NHS digital is provided below.
We regret we are unable to assist you further. If you would like any further information, you can email CrimeStatistics@ons.gov.uk and we will endeavour to help.