Sexual Offences

Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request ref: 01/FIN/25/003596/S
Version Date: 08/09/2025

The Performance Analysis (PA) Department have provided the following information.

To obtain this data PA have searched in Niche for all crimes which contained the keywords ‘paedophile hunter’, ‘peadophile hunter’, ‘pedophile hunter’, and ‘OCAG’. And then linked suspects.

Please note, Dorset Police do not hold conviction data, this information is held by Hid Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service.

Please provide the information and data described below for the period 10 August 2020 to 10 August 2025 (inclusive).

Definitions for the purposes of this request:
– “Paedophile-hunter(s)” or “paedophile hunting groups” means non-police civilian organisations, groups or individuals who pose online or in person to identify, investigate, or arrange the meeting of persons suspected of intending to commit sexual offences against children and who then report those persons to the police (sometimes publicised on social media). If your records use a different term (for example “online vigilante”, “citizen sting”, “community watch”), please include those in the search and state which search terms you used.
– “NFA” means “no further action”.
– “Release pending investigation” means a reported suspect was released pending further enquiries.
– “Outcome” refers to the police/CPS/charging/final court outcome associated with the police investigation prompted by the report.

Please provide:

1. Annual counts (broken down by calendar year) of reports to your force by paedophile-hunter groups (or equivalent civilians) where the report alleged a sexual-related offence. For each year, include the total number of reported incidents.
Please see the table below.

2. For those reported incidents, provide the following aggregate breakdowns (tables) by year and ethnicity (as recorded in your records) of the alleged suspect(s):
Number of reports per ethnicity per year.
For each ethnicity × year cell, provide counts of outcome categories: NFA, released pending investigation, charged (CPS charged), convicted, acquitted / found not guilty, and other final outcomes. If multiple outcomes occurred (e.g. initially NFA then reopened), list the most recent final outcome and also provide a count of changes of outcome.
Please see the table below.

3. For each conviction counted in (2), please also provide the average custodial sentence length in months (mean and median), broken down by year and ethnicity. Where available, provide the individual sentence lengths (anonymised) so that averages can be independently calculated.
Dorset Police do not hold information about convictions as this data is held by His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service.

4. For the same set of reported incidents, provide counts by year for whether the initial contact involved a real child at the point of contact (Yes / No / Unknown). For those where “Yes”, provide the outcome categories as in (2) and sentencing length data as in (3) for convictions.
Please see the table below.

5. Provide counts by year of incidents where it was later found (after police investigation) that a real child was involved (i.e., child victim confirmed after investigation), and the outcomes (NFA, charged, convicted, acquitted, other). Provide sentencing length data as in (3) for convictions.
Please see the table below. Dorset Police do not hold information about convictions as this data is held by His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service.

6. Provide counts and details of occasions where the paedophile-hunting team or individual who made the report was the subject of a police investigation as a result of their conduct (e.g., allegations of criminality, harassment, entrapment, misconduct). For these investigator-on-hunter cases, for each year provide:
Number of investigations opened into hunting teams/individuals.
Outcome of those investigations: NFA, charged, convicted, acquitted / found not guilty, internal discipline, or other. If prosecutions occurred, please provide offence codes, final court outcome, and sentencing length data as in (3) for convictions.
Information not held. It is not possible to determine if a group has been investigated. Individuals may be investigated and it may mention somewhere in the record that they are connected with a specific group but this would mean searching every offender to see if they are connected with a paedophile hunting group. This amount of searching is not possible within the appropriate time limit defined by the FOI Act.

7. For all of the above items, where possible, provide the data as anonymised, machine-readable records (CSV or Excel) where each row corresponds to a single reported incident and contains the following columns (leave personal identifiers blank/redacted but keep categorical data):
Year (YYYY)
Reporting source type (e.g., named paedophile-hunter group; “unknown civilian group”; “member of public via social media”)
Suspect age group (e.g., <18, 18–24, 25–34, 35–44, 45+) as recorded
Suspect ethnicity (as recorded)
Whether initial contact involved an actual child at point of contact (Yes/No/Unknown)
Whether, after investigation, a child victim was confirmed (Yes/No/Unknown)
Initial police outcome (NFA / released pending investigation / charged / other)
Final outcome (NFA / charged / convicted / acquitted / other)
CPS decision (if applicable)
Whether the reporting hunting team/individual was investigated by police (Yes/No)
Outcome of any investigation into the hunting team/individual (NFA / charged / convicted / acquitted / disciplinary / other)
Offence codes and short description (as recorded)
Custodial sentence length in months (if convicted)