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Home Office

Answer

Mr. Pike: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many (a) fraud and (b) forgery offences have been reported to Lancashire police in each year since 1997; and how many led to (i) prosecution and (ii) conviction. [209996] Ms Blears: The available information is given in the tables. Tables 1 and 2 give the number of offences recorded by the police in the Lancashire police force area. Recorded crime data are published on a financial year basis. Table 3 gives the number of defendants proceeded against and found guilty in the Lancashire police force area. Court proceedings data are published on a calendar year basis. Data for 2004 will not be available until the autumn. Because recorded crime deals with offences and court proceedings deals with defendants, the two data sets are not directly comparable. Table 1: Fraud and forgery offences recorded by the police in Lancashire, 1997-98 to 2001-02 Number of offences _________________________________________________________________________________________________. Fraud Forgery 1997-981 3,340 217 1998-992 4,279 167 1999-2000 3,831 193 2000-01 5,828 107 2001-02 6,155 183 _________________________________________________________________________________________________. 1 The number of crimes recorded using the coverage and rules in use until 31 March 1998. 2 The number of crimes recorded using the expanded coverage and revised counting rules which came into effect on 1 April 1998. Note: The data in this table are prior to the introduction of the National Crime Recording Standard. These figures are not directly comparable with those for later years. Table 2: Fraud and forgery offences recorded by the police in Lancashire, 2002-03 and 2003-04 Number of offences _________________________________________________________________________________________________. Fraud Forgery 2002-03 5,695 144 2003-04 6,991 166 _________________________________________________________________________________________________. Note: The data in this table take account of the introduction of the National Crime Recording Standard in April 2002. These figures are not directly comparable with those for earlier years. Table 3: Number of defendants proceeded against at magistrates courts and found guilty at all courts for fraud and forgery1 in the Lancashire police force area, 1997 to 2003 _________________________________________________________________________________________________. Fraud Forgery Proceeded against Found guilty Proceeded against Found guilty 1997 742 553 294 206 1998 872 667 236 161 1999 804 619 265 197 2000 759 546 171 130 2001 736 558 165 107 2002 739 540 199 133 2003 626 489 224 144 _________________________________________________________________________________________________. 1 These data are on the principal offence basis.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

209996; 430 c691-2W;430 c691-3W

Session

2004-05

Subjects

Crime Fraud Forgery Police Lancashire Lancashire Constabulary

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk