Theft from the person (FOI ref: 1543A/24)

Request

I would like to submit a FOI to West Midlands Police. I would like to know:

The top 10 areas/places in Birmingham that have recorded the highest number of pickpocketing crimes between 2023 up to August 2024, if possible please.

The areas can include neighbourhoods, estates or shopping centres (the Bullring, for example).

Amended Request 

Offences of ‘Theft from the person’ for the same time period I requested would be good if you could provide that please?

Response

Please find attached our response.

Please note that this data should be interpreted with caution. Comparing numbers of incidents/crimes can be misleading and does not necessarily indicate the likelihood of someone being a victim of crime. In addition, the number of incidents/crimes recorded in an area over a period of time can be influenced by a number of factors. Consequently, statistics on incidents/crimes for one period may not necessarily be a good indicator of future incidents in that area. 

Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that this data has been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request may be subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting the data. 

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of data which has relevance to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.  

If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material. 

Of the 3144 offences occurring in Birmingham during the specified time period, 2,085 did not have a location description recorded.

We have only provided data for the LPA and these top 10 figures must be used with caution