FOI T93/23 - Homicide

Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Crime, Prevention, Safeguarding and Corporate Development Departments of Northumbria Police. We can confirm that the information you have requested is held in part by Northumbria Police.

We are able to disclose the located information to you as follows.

You asked:

1. Please supply the numbers of women who were killed by a partner/relative/friend who had previous contact with your police force in the 12 months prior to their death. To clarify please attempt to identify offence(s) where both the victim and the suspect had had previous contact with the police for domestic abuse in relation to each other. Please give an annual breakdown from 2018 to 2023 or the last available data.

2. Please provide the number of people who died from suspected victim homicides (by this refer to suspected suicides where there is suspicion that a partner/relative/friend was a cause in their death due to domestic abuse) and who had contact with your police forces in the 12 months before their death.  Please give an annual breakdown from 2018 to 2023 or the latest available data.  Please take this term as being suspected victim homicide/suicide where domestic homicide was a factor considered by family as significant

No information held.  Only a Coroner can rule a verdict of suicide and determine whether it has occurred.

3. Please provide figures of domestic violence suvivors who your force ranked as high risk. Please provide the figure as an annual breakdown from 2018 to 2023 or the latest available data. 

Please see the table below which contains the data in order to satisfy this part of your request.  However, it should be noted that there was a change in the risk level process part way through the period you seek the data for, and as such the following caveats should be noted in relation to the data supplied:

• Pre-August 2020 High Risk Notifications (HRN’s) were created, a risk level was applied and then that HRN would go through an automated downgrade process.  Therefore, in order to ascertain the number of victims at high risk during that time we have looked at the initial risk level whilst considering any professional judgement changes to that risk assessment, either increasing the level of the grade or decreasing.
• Since August 2020, a HRN is assessed at a risk level and whilst this may change on some occasions, there is no automatic downgrade process. As such the figures for 2021, 2022 and 2023 to 19 December are based on the risk level of the HRN as it stands at the time of drawing the data from systems.
• The data supplied relates to the number of victims and not incidents/reports. If a victim has had an HRN that has been assessed as high risk at some point in the year, they will be included once as a high risk victim in that calendar year.  If they have been high risk on several occasions, they will still just be counted once.

* 2023 data covers the period from 1 January to 19 December inclusive.