Malicious communications data (FOI Ref 1848A/25)

FOI Request Reference: 1848A/25

Thank you for your request for information, received 3/9/2025

Request

Please may you provide me with:

The number of arrests your force has made under:

1.Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003

and

2.Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988.

Can this data be broken down by calendar year, from 2017 to the most recent available year?

Response

Please find enclosed our response.

For your information the system that we retrieve data from for arrests only goes back to 2018. For this reason you will not see any 2017 data below.

Please be advised that the data is provided in PDF as this is deemed the most secure format to avoid any possibility of `hidden data` being inadvertently shared.

However, it can be converted by the user into CSV or excel. There are guidelines how to do this available on the internet.

1.Under section 127(1) CA 2003 (sending via a public communication network a message which is grossly offensive, indecent, obscene, or menacing); and, under section 127(2)(c) CA 2003, of persistently making inappropriate use of a public communications network.

2025 data to 1 September 2025

 2.Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988. Can this data be broken down by calendar year, from 2017 to the most recent available year?

Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988 makes it an offence to send a letter, electronic communication, or article that conveys a message which is indecent, grossly offensive, or a threat, or that contains false information. It is also an offence to send such an article in whole or part of an indecent or grossly offensive nature. In all cases, the purpose of sending the communication must be to cause distress or anxiety to the recipient or any other person. 

2025 data to 1 September 2025

It is important to note that the recording system has 478 records with an incorrect input date, and as a result there are no records being found for the year 2017 as request.  Some of these may have been arrests in 2017 for the offences you require.  The only way to locate this is to do a manual search of each record which would then result in a cost refuse for the whole response. Therefore 2017 data has not been provided as we cannot guarantee any accuracy or indeed retrieve the data without exceeding cost.

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 considered 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 considered 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. 

As recommended as good practice by the Information Commissioner’s Office a version of this response may be published on the West Midlands Police website.