How many arrests under Section 127 and Section 1 were recorded by each individual police force in 2023?
Executive summary
Reporting based on Freedom of Information data collated by The Times and summarised in parliamentary and NGO sources shows 12,183 arrests under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988 in 2023, made by police forces that responded to the requests; the published accounts name some individual forces and counts but do not publish a complete, sourced table of every force’s 2023 figure in the materials provided here [1] [2] [3]. The currently available public reporting therefore permits citing a confirmed national total and several named force-level figures (including the Metropolitan Police at 1,709), but does not allow a definitive per‑force breakdown for all forces in 2023 from the sources supplied [4] [2] [5].
1. What the question actually demands and the limits of the public record
The user asks for a police-force-by-police-force tally of arrests under Section 127 and Section 1 in 2023; the primary investigative reporting that generated the headline total relied on Freedom of Information custody data supplied by a subset of forces, and the summaries in parliamentary and NGO briefings reference a 12,183 total and graphs covering a set of forces (variously described as 35, 37 or “over 35”), but the documents supplied here do not include a complete, published table listing every individual force’s 2023 arrest count for those offences [1] [5] [2].
2. What the sources do disclose: national totals and named forces
Multiple independent summaries cite the same national figure of 12,183 arrests in 2023 under the two communication offences, derived from custody data collated by The Times via FOI requests [1] [3] [2]. The Times-derived reporting and subsequent coverage identify specific high-count forces: the Metropolitan Police recorded 1,709 arrests in 2023, West Yorkshire 963 and Thames Valley 939, figures reiterated in secondary reporting summarising the FOI dataset [4]. Some outlets also note Leicestershire had the highest rate per 100,000 population, though that is an adjusted rate rather than a raw count [4].
3. Discrepancies in force coverage and why a full list can’t be compiled here
The sources supplied are inconsistent about how many forces were included — Lords Library refers to a graph covering 35 forces, while other reports say 37 forces supplied data to The Times — and none of the provided snippets publishes the full per-force list for 2023 that would be needed to answer the question exhaustively [5] [4] [2]. That gap means it is not possible, on the basis of the documents given, to provide a validated table of arrests by each individual police force in England and Wales for 2023; asserting such a table would exceed what the sources support [5] [1].
4. Context, alternative readings and potential agendas in the reporting
The framing of the figure as “30 arrests a day” was amplified by outlets and commentators arguing either that police are overreaching into speech regulation or that many arrests do not result in convictions because of evidential issues and non‑support by alleged victims — both narratives are in the record: the Times FOI summary produced the arrest totals and some force-level counts [1] [4], while analysts stress that convictions fell to around 1,119 in 2023, indicating most arrests did not lead to sentencing and complicating simple interpretations of policing practice [1] [2]. Some commentators and blogs use the raw numbers to argue political points about free speech and “policing of opinion,” while parliamentary debate highlights classification complexity (including domestic-abuse cases recorded under these codes) that can inflate apparent “online speech” figures [2] [3].
5. Conclusion and the best next steps for a complete per‑force breakdown
Based on the supplied reporting, the secure, attributable answers that can be given are: total arrests in 2023 = 12,183 (forces included in the FOI dataset); named counts include Metropolitan Police 1,709, West Yorkshire 963 and Thames Valley 939; a full force-by-force list is not contained in the supplied sources and therefore cannot be reproduced here with confidence [1] [4] [2] [5]. To obtain the exhaustive per-force figures sought, the next investigative steps are to access the original Times FOI dataset or the underlying FOI responses from individual forces (or request the Lords Library/graph data in tabular form), since the summaries and parliamentary references cite the dataset but do not publish the complete table in the materials provided [5] [2].