FOI 1461-25 Cat theft or abduction

Request:

Following the introduction of the Pet Abduction Act 2024, police forces in England and Northern Ireland are now obliged to maintain data on the numbers of dogs and cats reported stolen in their respective areas.

In order to build a picture of what is happening as regards cat theft in particular, since 2015 I have been collating data using Freedom of Information requests from each police force across the UK. This data and our subsequent report (the Cat Theft Report 2022) helped inform the discussion as the Bill progressed through parliament. With a very few notable exceptions, most police forces have been very helpful and have consistently provided this information. I would therefore be grateful if you could complete my freedom of information request below:

1. What were the total number of cat theft/abduction crimes in 2024?

2. What was the outcome (charge/summons, community resolution, active investigation, evidential difficulties, no suspect identified) for each cat theft/abduction crime in 2024?

3. Please list specific cat breed types with amounts (stolen/abducted in 2024) — or ‘breed unrecorded’ or ‘mixed breed’?

Response:

Crime Searched between January 2024 & December 2024 (Inclusive) for all Occurrence of theft where the Property Sub Type was Cat.

1. 6

2. 15: Police - named suspect, victim supports but evidential difficulties = 2
16: Victim declines/withdraws support - named suspect identified = 1
18: Investigation complete no suspect identified = 3

3. Breed is not a mandatory field and is not recorded in these cases.

The numerical data presented in this response is an un-audited snapshot of un-published data sourced from "live" systems and is subject to the interpretation of the original request by the individual extracting the data.

Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that the 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 is 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 relevance of data 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 the data is 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.