Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people convicted of stalking offences have received therapeutic custodial sentences or hospitalisation orders in each year since 2012.

The number of offenders sentenced at all courts, with sentencing outcomes and custody rate, for stalking offences, in England and Wales, from 2012 to 2014, can be viewed at

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-system-statistics-quarterly-december-2014

The published information includes small numbers of prosecutions and convictions for this offence before the offence was introduced. This is due to an error in data collection and should be ignored. Also, please note that 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 ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used.

The number of offenders sentenced at all courts in England and Wales for stalking offences specifically under Section 2A and Section 4A of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, with the number of offenders sentenced to the maximum custodial sentences permissible, from 2012 to 2014, can be viewed in Table 1.

Specific details of individual prison sentences, such as whether they included a therapeutic component, and information regarding the location in which an offence occurs in (i.e. in a domestic setting or otherwise) are not held centrally and can only be obtained at disproportionate cost.