Lincolnshire: Charge rate for stalking claims falls to 3.7%

Lincolnshire's Police and Crime Commissioner Marc Jones says officers are taking reports of stalking seriously after charge rates fell to 3.7%

Lincolnshire's police and crime commissioner (PCC) says officers are taking reports of stalking seriously after the charge rate fell to 3.7%.

Figures analysed by the BBC's Shared Data Unit found the rate had fallen from just over 6% in 2019/2020.

Nationally, charge rates fell from 11% to 6%, a continuing year-on-year trend, the analysis indicated.

PCC Marc Jones said many reports of stalking are additional to a victim's initial complaint.

The Home Office said the rise was linked to a change in the way stalking offences were recorded.

In Lincolnshire, 40 out of 1,082 stalking outcomes in 2021/22 resulted in a charge, with 51.5% of the remaining cases dropped due to evidential difficulties.

Mr Jones said: "If a victim of stalking and harassment contacts the police the chances that they are just telling you about one incident is zero."

'Proving every instance is impossible'

He said if a victim had been followed to work by an ex-partner 10 times, each one of those was a separate crime and needed to be recorded as such.

"Proving every single instance is impossible so what you might find is that the perpetrator is brought to book for their actions, the victim is safeguarded, that the police absolutely take action and ultimately a court sanction is gained, but not for the 50 or 100 incidents that made up the overall allegation," he said.

He said he had a "high level of confidence" officers were taking crimes seriously, but said there were "some things which tie the police in knots from a bureaucracy point of view".

He praised victims of stalking and harassment for coming forward, adding that the important thing was "to ensure people report early and accurately to give victims the best possible positive outcome".

Overall, the number of stalking incidents reported to police have more than tripled, jumping from 32,000 cases in England and Wales three years ago to nearly 100,000 in 2021-22, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

A government spokesperson said: "We take our response to stalking extremely seriously, which is why we have doubled the maximum sentence for stalking from five to 10 years."