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:
Please could you provide the following:
1. From 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2020 how many cruelty or neglect of children offences were reported to you?
2. From 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021 how many cruelty or neglect of children offences were reported to you?
Can you also provide:
a. The outcome for each offence.
b. The age range of victims.
c. The most commonly reported type of offence.
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.
I am able to disclose the located information to you as follows with the below caveats noted.
• Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.
• The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.
• Please note that the data has been presented in such a manner as to avoid the application of exemptions relevant under the Act (Section 40 – Personal Information) to withhold due to low numbers, and these will not be broken down further.
• The Data provided has been taken from the central database under all HO codes relating to the "Cruelty to Children / Young Persons" category. This covers the following offences:
011/02 Neglecting to provide for apprentice or servant
011/03 Cruelty or neglect of children
012/00 Abandoning children under 2 years
109/01 Allowing person under 16 to take part in performances endangering life or limb
109/02 Taking children to nurse for reward
109/05 Cruelty to children - exposing to risk of burning
109/06 Allowing children or young person to be in a brothel
109/07 Cruelty to children - safety at children's entertainment
109/08 Permitting child to be in verminous condition
The results of those searches are as follows:
|
Year |
2020 |
2021 |
|
Offences |
242 |
334 |
|
Cruelty or neglect of children |
242 |
331 |
|
Neglecting to provide for apprentice or servant |
0 |
3 |
|
Outcomes |
||
|
Caution adult |
76 |
60 |
|
Charge/Summons / Summons alternative offence / Community resolution |
12 |
3 |
|
Evidential difficulties |
57 |
64 |
|
Investigation complete - no suspect identified |
4 |
8 |
|
Investigation not in public interest / Not in public interest (police) |
1 |
3 |
|
Not stated |
5 |
72 |
|
Other agency action |
72 |
103 |
|
Victim does not support police action |
15 |
21 |
|
Victim Age Range |
||
|
0-4 |
83 |
134 |
|
5-9 |
98 |
107 |
|
10-14 |
51 |
85 |
|
15-17 |
7 |
8 |
|
Unknown |
3 |
0 |
If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.
Due to the different methods of recording information across 43 forces, a specific response from one constabulary should not be seen as an indication of what information could be supplied (within cost) by another. Systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data. For this reason responses between forces may differ, and should not be used for comparative purposes.
