Official Statistics

Statistics on so called ‘honour-based’ abuse offences recorded by the police

Published 16 December 2020

Applies to England and Wales

Frequency of release: Annual

Forthcoming release: Home Office statistics release calendar

Home Office responsible statistician: John Flatley

Press enquires: pressoffice@homeoffice.gov.uk, Telephone: 020 7035 3535

Public enquires: crimeandpolicestats@homeoffice.gov.uk

This release contains statistics about so called ‘honour-based’ abuse (HBA) related offences recorded by the police in England and Wales.

1. Introduction

This publication provides information on the number of police recorded offences which were identified as being so called ‘honour-based’ abuse (HBA) related. These data have been collected by the Home Office from police forces on a mandatory basis since April 2019 and are being published for the first time. The data have been published to shine a light on the level of these offences dealt with by the police and to encourage other victims to come forward and report these offences to the police. Greater Manchester Police have been unable to supply data following the implementation of a new IT system in July 2019.

So called HBA-related crimes for the purposes of this collection follow the current police and Crown Prosecution Service definition:

an incident or crime involving violence, threats of violence, intimidation, coercion or abuse (including psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional abuse) which has or may have been committed to protect or defend the honour of an individual, family and/or community for alleged or perceived breaches of the family and/or community’s code of behaviour.

Further information on HBA can be found on the Crown Prosecution Service website.

The collection includes, but is not limited to, crimes of forced marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM). Where a forced marriage or FGM offence is recorded on a force crime record management system, it should always be tagged with an HBA marker. The collection also identifies the number of FGM offences that have been reported to and recorded by the police following a referral via the FGM Mandatory Reporting Duty. This requires regulated health and social care professionals and teachers in England and Wales to report known cases of FGM in under 18-year-olds to the police. The FGM duty came into force on 31 October 2015.

Any other notifiable offence can also be marked as being HBA-related by the police. The types of offences identified as being HBA-related are shown in the Key Results section.

As with all police recorded crime figures, these data only cover crimes that were reported to and recorded by the police. It is recognised that HBA tends to be a hidden crime and victims can be reluctant to bring them to the attention of police or other authorities. These data, therefore, are likely to only represent a small proportion of the actual HBA offences committed in 2019 2020.

Data in this release are labelled as experimental statistics. This designation is used for newly developed or innovative official statistics that are undergoing evaluation. Experimental statistics are developed under the guidance of the Head of Profession for Statistics. They are published to involve users and stakeholders at an early stage in assessing their suitability and quality. Users and stakeholders can comment on the statistics in this release and their future direction via the Home Office Crime Statistics Team’s email address: crimeandpolicestats@homeoffice.gov.uk.

While police forces have been asked to confirm the accuracy of the statistics in this release, we are aware of a number of data quality issues.

It is known that for some police forces, the identification of crimes as HBA-related relies on a police officer or other member of police staff remembering to correctly apply the HBA-related tag to an offence on the force crime record management system. Such tags are not always correctly applied. There may be some crimes that forces manage as being HBA-related but have not been identified as such in the data return to the Home Office. While checks have been completed to ensure that all offences of FGM or forced marriage have been included, it is possible that there are missing tags from other offences which are HBA-related.

Forces either supplied record level data via the Home Office Data Hub (HODH) or in an aggregate data manual return. For forces with data on the Data Hub, the Home Office extracts the number of offences for each force which have been tagged by forces as being HBA-related. Therefore, counts of HBA via the HODH are dependent on the tag being correctly applied for each respective offence.

In the manual return, police forces submit a quarterly spreadsheet containing a count of HBA-related offences and the number of FGM and forced marriage offences.

At the end of the financial year, the Home Office carried out a series of quality assurance checks on the HBA data collected from the police forces (either by aggregate return or via the HODH).

These checks include:

• looking for any large or unusual numbers in HBA-related offences across forces
• checking to see that FGM and forced marriage offences were tagged correctly
• checking to see what offences were tagged as HBA-related and whether that seemed appropriate

Police forces are then asked to investigate any issues and either provide an explanation or resubmit figures. Once these issues are addressed, the data are then tabulated and sent back to forces for them to verify. At this stage, they are asked to confirm in writing that the data they submitted are correct and if they are not, then they have the opportunity to revise their figures.

Home Office statisticians will work with police forces to improve the data quality of this collection.

2. Key results - data for 2019 2020

In 2019 2020, there were 2,024 HBA-related offences recorded by the police in England and Wales (excluding Greater Manchester Police). Of these, there were 74 FGM offences and 140 forced marriage offences.

Table 1: Offences involving so called ‘honour-based’ abuse recorded by the police in England and Wales (excluding Greater Manchester Police), 2019 2020

	All HBA offences	FGM offences	Forced marriage offences	Other HBA tagged offences
England and Wales	2,024	74	140	1,810

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office

In 2019 2020, 33 of the 74 of the FGM offences were reported to the police under the mandatory reporting duty for FGM.

Data are also available showing what types of offences were HBA-related for 30 forces who sent record level data to the Home Office. These 30 forces recorded 78 per cent of all HBA-related offences across England and Wales in the last year. In 2019 2020, over a quarter (28%) of HBA-related offences were for assault without injury, with a further 17% for assault with injury. Other offences are shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Proportion of offences involving so called ‘honour-based’ abuse recorded by the police, by offence category, England and Wales, 2019/20, 30 forces¹

Offence code	Offence category	Percentage
105A	Assault without injury	28
8N	Assault with injury	17
3B	Threats to kill	10
36	Kidnapping	10
8R	Malicious Communications	7
19C	Rape of a female aged 16 and over	6
8L	Harassment	5
8Q	Stalking	2
11A	Cruelty to children/young persons	2
9A	Public fear, alarm or distress	1
	All other offences	10
	Total	100

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office
1. Numbers may not sum to 100 due to rounding