Livestock theft

Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request ref: 01/FIN/24/2283

Version Date: 28/08/2024

The Performance & Analysis Department have provided the following information.

i) I would like to know about the total number of cases of livestock theft reported in the calendar years 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 (the latest available). Please could these cases be provided with a yearly breakdown 

ii) Of the above cases, please could you tell me how many involved the theft of sheep. If this is not possible, alternatively could you provide the number of these theft cases where a keyword search of 'sheep' is conducted. Could these results also be provided with a yearly breakdown in a separate column.

Year	ALL Livestock Theft crimes	(ii) Of which…theft of sheep
2019	8	5
2020	13	8
2021	5	4
2022	2	1
2023	8	5
2024 (to 31 July)	8	4
Total	44	27

Please Note: There is no specific crime code for livestock theft, so these crimes have been identified from relevant keywords being used to capture the different types of livestock within the summary of outbuilding burglary or theft categories.

A manual review has then been conducted on the results to remove any erroneous results e.g. theft of horse trailer as opposed to actual livestock.

These figures reflect the volume of crimes of livestock theft recorded NOT the volume of livestock stolen.

iii) Please could you tell me how many cases of livestock theft (of any kind) resulted in a criminal conviction, also with a yearly breakdown. PLEASE DISREGARD (iii) if this would exceed the cost/time threshold of the FOI Act.

Convictions data is not police held data but is held by the Courts

As the closest alternative, the number of the above crimes resulting in a charge/summons have been captured.

Year	ALL Livestock Theft crimes - Charges/Summons
2019	0
2020	0
2021	0
2022	0
2023	0
2024 (to 31 July)	1
Total	1