Domestic Abuse numbers continued (FOI)

​Request

I've now received the same data for Guernsey and I believe there may be some discrepancies with how the two islands are reporting this data. 

Please can you confirm that Table 1 (Recorded domestic abuse crimes) in the response provided for 635083028 is solely domestic abuse cases reported to the Police despite it saying "crimes". The question in the original FOI was: "How many cases of domestic abuse (both male and female victims) have been reported to the States of Jersey Police for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and in 2024 to date."

If it is 'crimes' then please can you provide further information. Firstly, please can you provide numbers on the cases reported to Jersey Police and secondly please can you explain how a case reported to the police becomes a crime, by Jersey Police's definition. 

The numbers for Guernsey are higher but they are "domestic abuse cases reported to Guernsey Police".

Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

Response

The original Freedom of Information report 635083028 is available at 

Domestic abuse statistics 2019 to 20 August 2024 (FOI)​

The original question was, “How many cases of domestic abuse (both male and female victims) have been reported to the States of Jersey Police from 2019 to date?”. As stated in the footnote of this previous release, the States of Jersey Police confirmed that the figures related to the number of “crimes” recorded by the States of Jersey Police. The number of reported domestic incidents is provided in the table below, but it is important to appreciate that this includes verbal only domestic incidents reported which may not amount to abuse and where neither partner can be considered to be a victim. It is only where a crime report is created that a victim is identified. 

​​1 Accurate up to 20 August to provide fair comparison with this previous release. 

Below is an excerpt from the Home Office Counting Rules:

‘An incident will be recorded as a crime for ‘victim related’ offences if, on the balance of probability:

(A) The circumstances of the victim’s report amount to a crime as defined by law (the police will determine this, based on their knowledge of the law: and

(B) There is no credible evidence to the contrary immediately available.

   A belief by the victim (or person reasonably assumed to be acting on behalf of    the victim), that a crime has occurred is usually sufficient to justify its recording’​