Hare coursing

Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request ref: 01/FOI/25/007860/F

Version Date: 27/03/2025

The Performance & Department has provided the following information.

How many arrests were made by your police force for the offence of hare coursing (the offence of trespassing with intent to pursue hares) over the last five years?

If you could send the data for each year please. So:
•           Jan 2020 – Dec 2020
•           Jan 2021 – Dec 2021
•           Jan 2022 – Dec 2022
•           Jan 2023 – Dec 2023
•           Jan 2024 – Dec 2024

A search was carried out on the detainee management report for all arrests, for the offence of trespassing and none were relevant to hare coursing.

There were three arrests that didn’t specify the type of trespassing, these were searched for individually and none related to hare coursing.

Hare coursing is a non-notifiable offence – so we no longer record these as crimes either.

Despite this, there was one crime of hare coursing found (in 2020), which did not result in an arrest.