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Graffiti

Volume 487: debated on Thursday 29 January 2009

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will make it her policy that incidents of graffiti be recorded separately from other criminal damage. (251227)

Recorded crimes (notifiable offences) such as criminal damage are broken down at a main offence group level based on legal definitions. Sir Ronnie Flanagan’s independent Review of Policing published on 8 February 2008 focused on the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy including the amount of information collected by officers for crime recording purposes. The extra breakdowns requested would place an additional burden on the police and there are no plans to ask forces to do this at this time.