Official Statistics

Statistics on so called ‘honour-based’ abuse offences, England and Wales, 2020 to 2021

Published 9 December 2021

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: 0300 123 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 have been published for the second 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.

So called HBA-related crimes for the purposes of this collection follow the 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 by the police, it should always be tagged on their Record Management System, with an HBA identifier. 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 is 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 year ending March 2021.

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, the Home Office 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 identifier to an offence on their Record Management System. Such identifiers 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 forces have not always correctly applied an identifier for 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 who supplied data to the HODH, the Home Office extracts the number of offences for each force which have been identified by forces as being HBA-related. Therefore, counts of HBA via the HODH are dependent on the identifier 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 the aggregate return or via the HODH).

These include checks:

• for any large or unusual numbers in HBA-related offences across forces
• that FGM and forced marriage offences were identified correctly
• that offences identified as HBA-related 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 continue to work with police forces to improve the data quality of this collection.

2. Key results

In the year ending March 2021, there were 2,725 HBA-related offences recorded by the police in England and Wales. Excluding Greater Manchester Police, who were unable to provide data for year ending March 2020 following the implementation of a new IT system in July 2019, there were 2,383 HBA-related offences. This was an increase of 18% compared with year ending March 2020 (2,024; see Table 2 in the tables published alongside this release).

Increases in HBA-related offence recorded by the police over the last year could be due to a number of reasons, including:

• general improvements in crime recording
• the police improving their identification of what constitutes so-called HBA
• more victims coming forward to report these offences to the police
• a genuine increase in these offences

Furthermore, the year ending March 2021 covered certain time periods where COVID-19 pandemic restrictions were in place. These restrictions may have affected the level of so-called HBA-related offences.

As there may be a number of reasons for the increase in these offences, caution is urged in interpreting the 18% increase in these crimes.

Of the 2,725 HBA-related offences recorded in year ending March 2021, there were 78 FGM offences and 125 forced marriage offences.

Table 1: Offences involving so called ‘honour-based’ abuse recorded by the police in England and Wales, year ending March 2021

	All HBA-related offences	FGM offences	Forced marriage offences	Other HBA-related tagged offences
England and Wales	2,725	78	125	2,522

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office

In year ending March 2021, 55 of the 78 (71%) FGM offences recorded by the police were reported to the police under the mandatory reporting duty for FGM.

Data were also available showing what types of offences were HBA-related. In the year ending March 2021, 16% of HBA-related offences were for assault with injury, 15% for assault without injury and 14% for controlling and coercive behaviour. All these were similar proportions to the previous year[^1]. 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, year ending March 2021¹

Offence code	Offence category	Percentage
8N	Assault with injury	16
105A	Assault without injury	15
8U	Controlling and coercive behaviour	14
3B	Threats to kill	8
8R	Malicious Communications	7
19C	Rape of a female aged 16 and over	6
36	Kidnapping	6
8Q	Stalking	5
8L	Harassment	5
11A	Cruelty to children/young persons	2
9A	Public fear, alarm or distress	1
	All other offences	14
	Total	100

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

A breakdown of the number of HBA-related offences recorded within each Police Force Area (PFA) is provided in Table 4 in the tables published alongside this release. Data at the PFA level need to be interpreted with caution as the volume of these offences was relatively low in some PFAs and, as such, will be subject to a degree of fluctuation from year-to-year.