Official Statistics

Statistics on so called 'honour-based' abuse offences, England and Wales, year ending March 2024

Published 7 November 2024

Applies to England and Wales

Frequency of release: Annual

Forthcoming releases: Home Office statistics release calendar

Home Office responsible statistician: John Flatley

Press enquires: pressoffice@homeoffice.gov.uk, telephone: 0300 123 3535

Public enquires: crimeandpolicestats@homeoffice.gov.uk

This release contains statistics about so called ‘honour-based’ abuse (HBA) related offences and incidents recorded by the police in England and Wales.

1. Introduction

This publication provides information on the number of police recorded offences which were identified as being so called HBA-related. This data has been collected by the Home Office from police forces in England and Wales on a mandatory basis since April 2019.

This data has been published to show the level of these offences dealt with by the police and to encourage other victims to report these offences to the police.

So called HBA-related offences and incidents, for the purposes of this collection, follow the police and Crown Prosecution Service definition of:

an incident or crime involving violence, threats of violence, intimidation, coercion or abuse (including psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional abuse) which has or may have been committed to protect or defend the honour of an individual, family and/or community for alleged or perceived breaches of the family and/or community’s code of behaviour.

Further information on HBA can be found on the Crown Prosecution Service website.

The collection includes, but is not limited to, crimes of forced marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM). Where a forced marriage or FGM offence is recorded by the police, it should always be tagged on their Record Management System, with an HBA identifier. The collection also identifies the number of FGM offences that have been reported to and recorded by the police following a referral via the FGM Mandatory Reporting Duty. This requires regulated health and social care professionals and teachers in England and Wales to report known cases of FGM in victims aged 17 and under to the police. The FGM duty came into force on 31 October 2015.

Any other notifiable offence^{[footnote 1]} can also be marked as being HBA-related by the police. The types of offences identified as being HBA-related are shown in the Key Results section.

As with all police recorded crime figures, this data only cover offences that were reported to and recorded by the police. It is recognised that HBA is a hidden crime and victims can be reluctant to bring them to the attention of police or other authorities. This data, therefore, is likely to only represent a fraction of the actual HBA offences committed in the year ending March 2024.

Also published are the number of HBA-related incidents that have not resulted in the recording of a notifiable crime. An example of an HBA-related incident could include where a neighbour or other third-party reports suspected HBA, but upon attending the incident (or after investigation), the police could not substantiate the report. In this circumstance, this would remain recorded as an HBA-related incident.

2. Key results

In the year ending March 2024, there were 2,755 HBA-related offences recorded by the police in England and Wales, a decrease of 8% compared with the year ending March 2023 (when there were 3,008 offences). This is the first decrease since the time series began in the year ending March 2020.

In May 2023, changes were made to the Home Office Counting Rules for conduct crimes (stalking, harassment and coercive and controlling behaviour). The requirement to record 2 crimes when one of them was a conduct crime was removed, though police continue to investigate these offences. For all police recorded crime, this has led to a reduction in offences often associated with conduct crimes, such as malicious communications. While this may have affected the level of HBA-related offences recorded in the last year, it is not clear that this change is the main driver for the fall in these offences.

Figure 1: Offences involving so called ‘honour-based’ abuse recorded by the police in England and Wales, year ending March 2021 to year ending March 2024

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office.

Prior to the fall seen in the latest year, there had been a gradual upward trend in the number of HBA-related offences recorded by the police.

The increases in HBA-related offences recorded by the police over the previous few years could be due to several reasons, including:

• general improvements in crime recording
• the police improving their identification of what constitutes so-called HBA
• more victims coming forward to report these offences to the police
• a genuine increase in these offences

HBA offences by type

Of the 2,755 HBA offences recorded in the latest year, 111 were FGM and 201 forced marriage offences. Although there was a fall in the overall number of HBA offences over the past year, the number of FGM offences and forced marriage offences increased slightly (by 25 and 28 offences respectively). Over half (54%; 60 offences) of the FGM offences recorded by the police were reported under the mandatory reporting duty for FGM.

Table 1: Offences involving so called ‘honour-based’ abuse recorded by the police in England and Wales, year ending March 2024

	All HBA-related offences	FGM offences	Forced marriage offences	Other HBA-related tagged offences
England and Wales	2,755	111	201	2,443

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office

In the year ending March 2024, 20% of HBA-related offences were for controlling and coercive behaviour, 14% for assault with injury and 11% for assault without injury. Other offences are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Proportion of offences involving so called ‘honour-based’ abuse recorded by the police, by offence category, England and Wales, year ending March 2024

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office

Notes:
1. Numbers may not sum to 100 due to rounding.

HBA incidents

In the year ending March 2024, there were 1,810 HBA-related incidents recorded by the police in England and Wales, a decrease of 2% compared with the previous year (1,840). These cover incidents reported to the police that, following investigation, do not amount to an offence according to the National Crime Recording Standard.

HBA by Police Force Area

Data at the PFA level needs to be interpreted with caution as the volume of these offences was relatively low in some PFAs and, as such, can be subject to a degree of fluctuation from year-to-year. Also, PFAs vary in their population size and demographic composition, therefore we would expect variation between them in any year.

For the year ending March 2024, the Metropolitan Police Service recorded the highest number of HBA offences; 14% or 398 of the total recorded offences in England and Wales.

A breakdown of the number of HBA-related offences and incidents recorded within each PFA are provided in Statistics on so called ‘honour-based’ abuse offences, England and Wales, 2023 to 2024: data tables; table 5 and table 7, published alongside this release.

5. Data quality

While police forces have been asked to confirm the accuracy of the statistics in this release, the Home Office are aware of several potential data quality issues.

It is known that for some police forces, the identification of crimes as HBA-related relies on a police officer or other member of police staff remembering to correctly apply the HBA-related identifier to an offence on their Record Management System. Such identifiers are not always correctly applied. There may be some crimes that forces manage as being HBA-related but have not been identified as such in the data return to the Home Office.

Forces either supplied record-level data via the Home Office Data Hub (HODH) or an aggregate data manual return. For forces who supplied data to the HODH, the Home Office extracts the number of offences for each force which have been identified by forces as being HBA-related. Therefore, counts of HBA via the HODH are dependent on the identifier being correctly applied for each respective offence.

In the manual return, police forces submit a quarterly spreadsheet containing a count of HBA-related offences and the number of FGM and forced marriage offences.

At the end of the financial year, the Home Office carried out a series of quality assurance checks on the HBA data collected from the police forces (either by the aggregate return or via the HODH).

These include checks:

• for any large or unusual numbers of HBA-related offences across forces
• large numerical changes by force between years
• that FGM and forced marriage offences were identified correctly
• that the type of offences identified as HBA-related seemed plausible

Police forces are then asked to investigate any issues and either provide an explanation or resubmit figures. Once these issues are addressed, the data is then tabulated and sent back to forces for them to verify. At this stage, they are asked to confirm in writing that the data they submitted is correct and if it is not, then they have the opportunity to revise their figures.

Home Office statisticians will continue to work with police forces to improve the data quality of this collection.

1. Notifiable offences cover those that could possibly be tried by a jury (these include some less serious offences, such as minor theft, that would not usually be dealt with in this way) plus a few additional closely related offences, such as assault without injury. ↩