Arrest data - 060/18

Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')

As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority (including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.

You asked:

For statistics on the number of arrests without charge for the following offences between January 1st 2015 and the date of receipt of this request.

•           Fraud

•           Assault (including section 47, section 20 & section 18)

•           Affray & violent disorder

•           Murder, Attempted murder and conspiracy to murder

•           Rape, attempted rape, male rape, sexual assault, historic sex abuse

•           Sexual Assault, sexual grooming, unlawful sexual intercourse, sex act with a child

•           Burglary, burglary with intent, aggravated burglary, attempted burglary, theft 

I also request statistics on the total number of arrests in 2015, 2016 and 2017. 

You then clarified;

•           I will require a total for each offence identified

•           I require the number of arrests where the arrest resulted in

o          No charge (i.e. No Further Action (NFA))

o          A disposal other than a charge (i.e. caution, community resolution, etc)

o          A charge

I also require the total number of arrests for the crimes referenced within the timeframe stipulated in my request. 

Further to this, we also sought clarity on the below points and your response to each of those is clarified after each of the queries posed. 

•           Assault – we can include all offences contrary to Section 47, Section 20 and Section 18 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. Does the requestor also wish to include Common Assault offences? – Yes

•           Historic Sexual Abuse - Can the requestor confirm their definition of 'historic' and also what offences would you like to include as 'sexual abuse'? We can provide all offences classified as a 'sexual offence' by the Home Office this will include rape, attempted rape, sexual assaults, indecent exposure, prostitution offences etc or if the requestor would like choose particular sexual offences they are interested in and we can provide data based on this. – All offences classified as a sexual offence by the Home Office

•           Sexual Grooming - The offences which include the words grooming are

•           Meeting a female child following sexual grooming etc. - offender 18 or over and victim under 16 (includes attempts) 088/01 – Please include both sexual grooming offences.

•           Meeting a male child following sexual grooming etc. - offender 18 or over and victim under 16 (includes attempts) 088/02 - Please include both sexual grooming offences.

•           There is also an offence for Engage in sexual communication with a child 071/17. Can the requestor confirm which offences they would like to include please? – All offences classified as a sexual assault by the Home Office.

•           Unlawful Sexual Intercourse - This offence is no longer used. Can the requestor confirm which offences they would like to include in this please? - All offences classified as a sexual assault by the Home Office

•           Sex Act with a Child - Does this include all offences where there has been sexual activity with a child or is the requestor referring to one particular offence? – All offences where there has been sexual activity with a child.

•           Theft - Does the requestor wish to include all offences classified as 'theft and handling' by the Home Office? - Yes 

In Response:

Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Corporate Development Department of Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held by Northumbria Police, however cannot be disclosed for the following reason. 

The information requested is not held in a format that allows its extraction within the permitted 18 hour threshold.  Arrests for historic sexual offences are included in the overall sexual offences category, however, to separate these each record would need to be read to establish when the crime took place. We do not have that information from the arrest details.  Similarly, burglary figures include arrests for attempted burglary, however in order to establish which burglaries were attempts, each record would need to be read as again we cannot access this information from the arrest details.  We have estimated that to extract this information would take well over the permitted 18 hours, therefore Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act would apply. This section does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimated that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit of 18 hours, equating to £450.00

You should consider this to be a refusal notice under Section 17 of the Act your request. 

Although excess cost removes Northumbria Police's obligations under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, as a gesture of goodwill I have supplied information, retrieved or available before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded. I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of your request. 

With the below in mind, I am able to disclose information to you as attached. 

Data was collated through a search of all arrests between 01/01/2015 and 31/12/2017. 

Offence types have been divided up by Home Office classification at first instance, then by PS Group3.  The majority of fraud offences are recorded by Action Fraud and therefore there are few arrests for Fraud.  Assault includes all those offences classified as most serious violence against the person, less serious violence against the person and assault without injury.  The only exception to this is where the offence is murder, attempted murder or conspiracy to murder, these have been counted in the relevant categories.  The figure for sexual offences includes rape, sexual grooming, sexual activity with a child and male rape. Likewise the figure for rape includes the male rapes.