Drugs: Crime

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what his estimate is of the number and proportion of offences that were drug-related in (a) Darlington, (b) County Durham and (c) England in each of the last five years. (135013)

The information requested is not available. Data collected centrally on recorded crime do not identify whether any offences (other than drug offences as defined by law) are drug related. The recorded crime series does include the number of specific drug offences and these are given in the following table.

*Table 1: drug offences recorded by the police 2001-02*
	Number of offences
Darlington	229
Durham	1,317
England	111,968

*Table 2: drug offences recorded by the police—2002-03 to 2005-06*
	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05	2005-06
Darlington	211	220	230	302
Durham	1,289	1,205	1,062	1,299
England	130,825	131,551	133,140	165,842
Note: The National Crime Recording Standard was introduced in April 2002. Figures before and after that date are not directly comparable.

Volume 459: debated on Wednesday 2 May 2007