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Offences against Children

Answer

The Home Office does not hold the information requested. Information on criminal offences and criminal justice outcomes is not routinely recorded or published in a way that identifies whether an offender was a member of an organised grooming gang.

Data on the total number of charges for rape offences, not specifically those relating to grooming gangs, recorded in England and Wales for each of the last ten years is shown below. As policing is devolved in Scotland and Northern Ireland, the Home Office does not hold equivalent data for those jurisdictions.

Financial year ending	Number of charges for rape offences
March 2017	4,543
March 2018	3,775
March 2019	2,596
March 2020	2,404
March 2021	3,159
March 2022	3,158
March 2023	3,954
March 2024	4,965
March 2025	5,486
March 2026	6,976

The Ministry of Justice publishes data on convictions for rape offences in its Criminal Justice System statistics. These data do not identify whether offenders were members of organised grooming gangs. Ministry of Justice date is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-statistics-quarterly-march-2026

The Government is committed to improving its understanding of, and response to, group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse. This includes investing in specialist policing capabilities through the Tackling Organised Exploitation (TOEX) Programme and the Child Sexual Exploitation Taskforce to improve the identification of offenders, support victims and bring perpetrators to justice. The Government is also implementing all of Baroness Casey’s recommendations following her National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

29116

Session

2026-27

Subjects

Convictions Organised crime Rape Offences against children

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk