Sexual Harassment

(asked on 6th September 2022) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how reported incidents of catcalling, including on the street, are logged by the police.


Answered by
Jeremy Quin Portrait
Jeremy Quin
This question was answered on 21st September 2022

The Government takes all forms of sexual harassment extremely seriously. While there is not a specific ‘catcalling’ offence, depending on the circumstance of the case, this behaviour may be captured my other offences including harassment and public order offences. The most recent data show that in the year to March 2022, the police recorded 263,919 harassment offences. This is a 20% increase on the year to March 2021, likely driven by an increase in victims reporting to the police and improvements in recording practices. In addition, in the year to March 2022 the police recorded 472,067 offences of public fear, alarm or distress, an increase of 27% on the year to March 2021. Public fear, alarm or distress can be used by police to capture behaviours that do not meet the criteria required to formally be recognised as a harassment offence, for example when the behaviour happens once and not repeated. It is not possible from the data available to determine the type of harassment experienced, nor which offences were sexual in nature. The Home Office Counting Rules provide a national standard for the recording and counting of ‘notifiable’ offences recorded by police forces in England and Wales (known as ‘recorded crime’).

We have taken a number of actions to tackle street sexual harassment. In September 2021 we launched the pilot StreetSafe tool enabling the public to report anonymously areas where they feel unsafe, so that local authorities and the police can take practical steps in response. Since October 2021, we have announced awards of £23.5 million to PCCs and local authorities under Round 3 of the Safer Streets Fund, followed by £50m to 100 projects in Round 4 of the Fund to make public spaces safer for everyone with many projects aiming to help women and girls feel safer on the streets. Furthermore, in December 2021 the College of Policing published a new guidance product for police officers, advising them how to respond to reports of public sexual harassment, and in August the CPS published updates to its legal guidance on public order offences to make clear to prosecutors how public order offences can be used to tackle public sexual harassment.

In addition, in March 2022 we launched the ‘Enough’ communications campaign, which seeks to change public attitudes and tolerance towards crimes such as public sexual harassment.

In July we launched a targeted consultation on whether there should be a specific criminal offence of public sexual harassment. The consultation closed on 1 September and the Home Office is now in the process of analysing the responses.

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