The Missing Persons Data Report for 2014/15 provides narrative and context to the published statistical data in the high level reports published in December 2015. This report includes references to the data supplied for the 2013/14 year as well as for 2014/15.

As highlighted in the 2014/15 high level report, an increase has been noted in the number of calls relating to missing persons, within England, Wales and Scotland. This increase has been recalculated as 5% (not 3% as set out in the 2014/15 high level report). In 2014/15, 321,992 calls were made to police forces, 14,820 more than in 2013/14.

In previous reports call data was used to report total incident figures. Police forces are now able to break this call data down, into the number of incidents created and the number of individuals to whom the incidents refer. This is due to improved data recording and system changes.

In the 2014/15 year, across the English and Welsh police forces there were 282,066 missing person-related calls, of which 210,632 were created as incidents, relating to 129,046 individuals. Police Scotland received 39,926 missing person-related calls, an increase of 9% compared with the 2013/14 year.

In 2014/15 just over one third of the incidents were attributable to repeat missing. This demonstrates that in line with the previous year, there is a slight increase in repeat incidents.

The 2014/15 year is the first year in which the adoption and use of the absent category can be seen clearly, with 38 police forces in England and Wales using the category.

The limitations found within this report are set out in detail on page 11. It is important to recognise that police forces use a variety of command and control and missing person systems and use different methods of recording and extracting data. For these reasons, data may not be directly comparable year-on-year between police forces and within police forces.

The full report, and the high level report, can be downloaded here.

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