FOI REF: FOI/2023/5016
You asked
Please send me the rates of rape by religion from 2020.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
Our estimates on prevalence of rape are collected by the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). The CSEW is a face-to-face victimisation survey in which people resident in households in England and Wales are asked about their experiences of a range of crimes in the 12 months prior to the interview. However, self-completion modules are used in the CSEW to collect information on topic areas, such as rape that respondents could feel uncomfortable talking about to an interviewer.
The latest CSEW data regarding rape by religion can be found in Table 5 of our Sexual offences prevalence and victim characteristics, England and Wales tables: Year ending March 2020.
Due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the face-to-face CSEW was suspended 17 March 2020. It was temporarily replaced with the Telephone-operated Crime Survey for England and Wales (TCSEW). Concerns around confidentiality and respondent safeguarding led to sexual assault questions being excluded from the survey. As of October 2021, the CSEW returned and these questions were reinstated.
Although there is a 2022 release for Sexual offences prevalence and victim characteristics , England and Wales tables, the data collection spanned across a 6-month period rather than the year, and so we do not hold this analysis broken down by sexual offence type. Not only would the creation of such analysis include a high level of statistical skill and judgement, the sample sizes collected for this year are not large enough to break down by the level of granularity requested. Such analysis would be an inaccurate representation and would undermine our statutory functions to create good quality statistics that inform public policy and public good.