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Sex offences up while convictions down in our area

Sex offences up while convictions down in our area

Reports of sexual offences in the Humberside Police region have grown year-on-year however convictions have decreased.

The most recent report shows that Humberside Police received 2,854 reports of sexual offences in the year ending June 2021, an increase from the previous year’s 2,784.

Convictions on the other hand have decreased from 108 in 2019 to 94 in 2020.

The region also has the third-highest number of registered sex offenders in the country, with 1,367 registered sex offenders currently living here.

That is equivalent to one offender per 607 people over the age of 10.

These shocking statistics also represent a 70% increase in offenders since 2010/11, when police first published these figures.

Just 803 registered offenders lived in the area back then.

The increase in figures is also a culmination of a decade of data, with offenders kept on the register for a minimum of 15 years for adults, eight years for juveniles.

This decrease in convictions is a worrying national trend as they rose from 5,905 in 2010/11 to 7,608 in 16/17, however fell to 4,287 in 2020/21.

Lockdown does play a factor in this due to the disruption it caused to courts and the judicial process as a whole.

The restrictions have not lowered the number of reports, with rape accounting for 37 per cent of all recorded crime in the past year, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The April to June 2021 – the most recent set of data – recorded 17,300 rape offences, which is an alarming increase form the quarterly average of between 12,000 and 15,000.

The report also showed an increase of six percent on domestic abuse cases with almost 850,000 being reported.

Nick Stripe, the head of crime statistics at the ONS explained taht these recent increases may be because of recent high-profile cases and an increase in reporting and social change, making people more comfortable to report crimes.

He said: “The rise could be due to an increase in victim reporting as lockdowns eased, an increase in the number of victims, or to an increase in victims’ willingness to report incidents, potentially as a result of high-profile cases and campaigns in recent times.”

With this increase in reported cases it would be hoped that the convictions will increase in a similarly high rate and break this worrying decline.