Sexual Relations in Public

  • Reference Number: 3092
  • Date released: 18 May 2011

Request

  1. The number of incidents where people have been arrested for having sexual relations in public, therefore committing an offence under the Home Office description of ‘Act of outraging public decency’, in the last three years – 2008, 2009 and 2010. If two or more people are arrested at the same time, this should count as once incident.
  2. For each incident, details should be given of the number of people involved, including their age and sex.
  3. For each incident, details should be given of where the incident took place, i.e. car park, public toilet, woods.
  4. For each incident, details should be given to the reasons of the arrest(s) and the charge(s) that each person faced.
  5. For each incident, details should be given as to which area within the force’s area that the offence occurred.

Response

In accordance with section 1(1) (b) of the Act our response is provided below;

Data relates to persons who have been arrested for 'Outraging Public Decency'. Each person is counted in the data irrespective of whether they were arrested at the same time as another individual as this is how the data is recorded.

Question 1

2008 14
2009 23
2010 20

Quesion 2

  Under 18 18-24 25-29 30-39 40-49 50 and over
2008 3 5 3 1 1 1
2009 0 6 3 5 4 5
2010 5 8 0 3 1 3

Quesion 3

Event Year Bus Station Car Park Custody Suite Garden Hospital In vehicle Public Footpath/Road Public toilet Public Transport Shop Town Centre Train Station  Woods/Parkland
2008       1 1 1 3       8    
2009 1       1 3 4 1 1 2 8 1 1
2010 1 1 1       7   1   4   5
Grand Total 2 1 1 1 2 4 14 1 2 2 20 1 6

Question 4

All individuals have been included as they had been arrested for 'Outraging Public Decency'. They may have also been arrested for additional offences.

Charge data relates to all charges linked under a custody record. Therefore it is possible to have more charge activity than persons involved. Not all charges will relate to the incident they were arrested for, they may relate to other additional offences that the person has been arrested for.

Year Eastern Northern Western Grand Total
2008 3 5 6 14
2009 6 6 11 23
2010 1 9 10 20
Grand Total 10 20 27 57

Please Note:

Police forces in the United Kingdom are routinely required to provide crime statistics to government bodies and the recording criteria is set nationally. However, the systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the crime data. It should be noted that for these reasons this force's response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other response you may receive.

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