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Offences committed against children

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WQ.195/2019

WRITTEN QUESTION TO H.M. ATTORNEY GENERAL BY DEPUTY M.R. HIGGINS OF ST. HELIER

ANSWER TO BE TABLED ON TUESDAY 18th JUNE 2019

Question

With regard to offences committed against children between 1986 and the present date will H.M. Attorney General produce a table, showing for each year –

  1. the number of prosecutions for each type of offence (e.g. rape, indecent assault, physical abuse, neglect, indecent photographs, psychological abuse etc.);
  2. the number of acquittals and convictions for each of the offences detailed in (a); and
  3. where there were convictions, the sentences awarded by the courts in each case?

Answer

(An answer to this question was initially tabled on 30th April 2019; H.M. Attorney General has tabled an updated answer.)

An answer was tabled to this question on 30 April 2019. That answer explained that data prior to 2014 was not readily available. The reason being that the Law Officers' Department adopted a document management system in 2014 which holds complete records in respect of prosecutions presented by the Department. The answer provided information from 2014 to the present date.

Following the tabling of the answer Deputy Higgins has requested further information in relation to offences from 1986 to 2013. Neither the Law Officers' Department nor the States of Jersey Police hold sufficiently complete information to provide data for years prior to 2008.

However, data for the period 2008 to 2014 is held by the States of Jersey Police. Their data is recorded in accordance with the Home Office counting rules, which requires the data to be referenced to the victim of a crime rather than the defendant of a crime. This often leads to cases being recorded multiple times on the police system which would only appear once in Law Officers' data. Law Officers' data is recorded against the defendant. Consequently, the data held by the States of Jersey Police is not held in a form which allows a comparison with data previously provided for the years 2014 – present.

Consequently, the data held by the States of Jersey Police for the period from 2008 to 2013 will be analysed by the Law Officers' Department in order to provide accurate data which will provide the information in the same format as contained in the first tabled answer.

To manually analyse the police data to convert it into a comparable format to that previously provided is a significant task that requires a suitably qualified legal adviser to undertake the analysis. Resources are being sourced and the data will be provided as soon as the analysis and conversion is complete.

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