Non-molestation Orders
(asked on 5th March 2015) - View Source
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many non-molestation orders issued by the courts were breached (a) once, (b) twice and (c) on more than three occasions in each of the last five years.
The number of child arrangement orders (residence and contact), prohibited steps orders, specific issues orders, and non molestation orders are shown in table 1 below. Note that data is not available for 2010 as the FamilyMan court database did not include all courts at this time. This data covers England and Wales and give the number of children and young people involved in those orders made.
Table 1 – Number of specific Children’s Act orders; England and Wales; 2011 to 2013
| Contact and Residence Orders* | Prohibited steps | Specific issue | NMOs |
2011 | 155,528 | 18,757 | 5,957 | 19,556 |
2012 | 158,112 | 19,788 | 6,515 | 19,406 |
2013 | 160,738 | 18,400 | 6,407 | 22,279 |
*Note: Child Arrangements Orders replaced separate Contact and Residence Orders in April 2014.
Data for 2014 will be published in Table 4 of Family Court Statistics Quarterly on 26 March at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/family-court-statistics-quarterly
Details of how many of the orders included in Table 1 were breached or resulted in enforcement or contempt of court or a sequestration order can only be obtained by manually checking case files at disproportionate cost.
The total number of enforcement proceedings in respect of contact orders and Child Arrangements Orders from 2011 to 2013 are shown in Table 2 – these comprise applications for an enforcement order for unpaid work and applications for an order requiring the payment of compensation for financial loss.
Table 2 - Numbers of applications and orders of enforcement of Child Arrangement orders - 2011 to 2013 |
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| (a) Applications for enforcement order for unpaid work | (b) All Enforcement orders made | (c) Applications for second enforcement order | (d) Second enforcement orders made | (e) Applications for an order to pay financial compensation | (f) Orders made for financial compensation |
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2011 | 522 | 38 | 1126 | 1 | 331 | 7 |
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2012 | 680 | 43 | 1312 | 1 | 301 | 10 |
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2013 | 959 | 54 | 1750 | 5 | 406 | 8 |
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Notes |
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1) figures for column (b) and column (f) together make up total enforcement order as recorded in Family Court Statistics Quarterly publication - table 4. |
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2) second enforcement order - column (d) - includes "breach of an enforcement order or order for increased hours." |
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3) figures for 2014 will only be available from 26th March 2014. |
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The number of defendants proceeded against at magistrates’ courts and found guilty and sentenced at all courts for breach of a non-molestation order in England and Wales from 2009 to 2013 are provided in Table 3. Data for 2014 are planned for publication in May 2015 in the Criminal Justice Statistics Quarterly at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/criminal-justice-statistics-quarterly
Table 3 - Defendants proceeded against at magistrates courts and found guilty and sentenced at all courts for breach of a non-molestation order (1), England and Wales, 2009 to 2013 (2)(3)(4)(5) | |||||
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Outcome | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 |
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Proceeded against | 1,933 | 2,257 | 2,339 | 2,467 | 2,777 |
Found guilty | 2,279 | 2,626 | 2,605 | 2,650 | 2,976 |
Sentenced | 2,174 | 2,550 | 2,566 | 2,605 | 2,951 |
of which |
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Absolute discharge | 6 | 11 | 20 | 20 | 19 |
Conditional discharge | 321 | 353 | 362 | 388 | 452 |
Fine | 337 | 409 | 407 | 491 | 640 |
Community sentence | 741 | 851 | 81 | 65 | 6 |
Suspended sentence | 249 | 285 | 267 | 251 | 337 |
Immediate custody | 457 | 493 | 567 | 463 | 503 |
Otherwise dealt with (6) | 63 | 148 | 862 | 927 | 994 |
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(1) An offence under S42A Family Law Act 1996 |
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(2) The figures given in the table relate to persons for whom these offences were the principal offences for which they were dealt with. When a defendant has been found guilty of two or more offences it is the offence for which the heaviest penalty is imposed. Where the same disposal is imposed for two or more offences, the offence selected is the offence for which the statutory maximum penalty is the most severe. | |||||
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(3) Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts and police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to make sure that data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used. | |||||
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(4) The number of defendants found guilty in a particular year may exceed the number proceeded against as the proceedings in the magistrates' court took place in an earlier year and the defendants were found guilty at the Crown Court in the following year; or the defendants were found guilty of a different offence to that for which they were originally proceeded against. | |||||
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(5) The number of offenders sentenced can differ from those found guilty as it may be the case that a defendant found guilty in a particular year, and committed for sentence at the Crown Court, may be sentenced in the following year. | |||||
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(6) The category Otherwise Dealt With (ODW) includes: one day in police cells; disqualification order; restraining order; confiscation order; travel restriction order; disqualification from driving; recommendation for deportation; and other miscellaneous disposals. | |||||
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Source: Justice Statistics Analytical Services - Ministry of Justice. |
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Ref: PQ 226458 |
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The number of offenders convicted of breaching a non-molestation order on one, two, or three or more occasions in each of the last five years for which data is available are provided in Table 4. These figures have been drawn from an extract of the Police National Computer (PNC) data held by the Department - they will differ from the figures taken from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) court proceedings database. The PNC holds details of all convictions and cautions given for recordable offences. Hence, police recorded crime and data court proceedings are not directly comparable.
As with any large scale recording system the PNC is subject to possible errors with data entry and processing so data provided may be subject to revision.
Table 4 - Number of offenders breaching non-molestation orders, England and Wales1 | ||||
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| Number of non-molestation order breach offences2 |
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12 months ending September3 | 1 | 2 | 3 or more |
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2010 | 1,854 | 190 | 43 |
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2011 | 1,847 | 206 | 44 |
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2012 | 1,960 | 224 | 45 |
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2013 | 2,200 | 220 | 36 |
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2014 | 2,559 | 308 | 46 |
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Data Source: MoJs copy of the Police National Computer |
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1. England and Wales includes all 43 police force areas and the British Transport Police |
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2. Where the primary offence on a given occasion was a non-molestation order breach offence. |
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3. The same offender may appear in multiple years. |
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