New sex crime recorded every two hours in South Yorkshire new figures reveal

South Yorkshire Police (SYP) recorded a total of 4,440 sexual offences in the county in the year ending March 2022, which amounts to the equivalent to 12 alleged crimes being committed every day, or one every two hours.

The figures were published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on March 23, 2023, and also show a total of 3,776 sexual offences were recorded by the force in the year ending March 2021. This equates to a year-on-year rise of 18 per cent, when the figures for the year ending 2022 are compared with those recorded for the year ending 2021.

Similarly, there has also been an increase in the rate of offences recorded per 1,000 people, with a rate of 2.7 per 1,000 in the year ending March 2021, rising to 3.2 in the year ending March 2022.

In the year ending March 2020, SYP recorded a total of 4,477 sex offences. When compared with the figures for the year ending March 2021, it shows there was a year-on-year decrease of 16 per cent. The 2020 and 2022 figures, when compared, show there was a slight decrease of 37 fewer reports in the year ending March 2022, which represents a fall of one per cent.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct regards Nottinghamshire Police and West Yorkshire Police to be similar-sized forces to SYP. For context, The Star has analysed figures from the same dataset for those police forces, to see how they compare.

The ONS figures show that the number of sex offences recorded by West Yorkshire Police rose from 7,514 in the year ending March 2021, to 9,330 in the year ending March 2022, representing a 24 per cent rise. The force also saw the rate of recorded sexual offences per 1,000 people rise from 3.2 in the year ending March 2021 to 4.0 in March 2022.

Nottingham Police also saw a rise in the number of reports of sexual offences. The force recorded a total of 2,590 in the year ending March 2021, rising to 3,504 in the year ending March 2022, equating to a rise of 35 per cent. Nottinghamshire Police recorded 2.2 sex offences per 1,000 people in the year ending March 2021, rising to 3.1 in the year ending March 2022.

The release of the most-recently available data on the number of recorded sexual offences comes after the charity, Rape Crisis, published a report entitled ‘Breaking Point’.

The report shows that victims and survivors of rape and other serious sexual offences are waiting for the longest out of everyone to have their experiences heard in court, with an average wait of 839 days from report to completion in court.

Data obtained by the charity through a Freedom of Information request to HM Courts and Tribunal Service showed that the number of vacated and ineffective (therefore delayed) rape trials more than doubled from 2019-2020 to 2021-2022.

The same data set shows that the number of trials that were postponed at least once increased by 133 per cent, whilst the number of trials with three or more previous trial dates has almost doubled.

There were five times as many trials that had been rescheduled six or more times.

In the last quarter of available data, adult rape and sexual offence cases in the Crown Court backlog have increased by over 1,000 cases.

*South Yorkshire Police has been approached for comment.