Children in Custody - 266/20

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:

I write to request information regarding your police forces arrangements for fulfilling its obligation under section 38(6) of Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 to transfer children to Local Authority Accommodation post charge. I would be grateful if you could please provide us with the following information for the year 2019:

1. How many children (anyone under 18) were held overnight (for 4 or more hours between the hours of 0000 and 0800) in the police station?
2. Can you provide a breakdown of those children by their age and ethnicity?
3. How many of those children who were held overnight, were held post-charge?
4. How many requests were made to the Local authority to accommodate children post-charge under section 38?
5. Please provide a breakdown of requests for secure and non-secure accommodation if possible.
6. How many children were transferred to local authority accommodation post-charge?

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, however the following should be noted with regards to the data supplied:

Please note that this data has been taken from existing custody reports, then put through a series of checks to see if relevant to the specifics of this request.

Q1 has been defined as cases meeting the following criteria: Between the hours of 00:00 and 08:00, four or more hours have been spent in detention.

This means that (eg) a case wherein someone had entered detention at 11:45, then been released at 05:00, would appear (05:15 time spent in detention, 05:00 of this between the above hours)

This means that (eg) a case wherein someone had entered detention at 19:00, then been released at 01:00, would not appear (06:00 time spent in detention, 01:00 of this between the above hours)

The remaining questions have been taken to refer to the cases identified in Q1.

It should also be noted that on this occasion we have considered no harm in the release of the disclosed information, however it should not be taken that this stance will always be taken should similar such request be received.

1. There were 721 instances wherein a juvenile was detained between such times that they were in detention for over four hours as specified by your request.
2. Ethnicity and Age breakdown:

Ethnicity	Count
Any other White background	2
Asian or Asian British : Any other Asian background	9
Black or Black British : African	3
Black or Black British : any other Black background	6
Black or Black British : Caribbean	4
Chinese or other Ethnic Group : Any other ethnic group	3
Mixed: Any other mixed background	1
Mixed: White and Black Caribbean	1
Not Stated : Declined	5
Not Stated : Not Understood	2
White British	685
Grand Total	721

 

Age	Count
12	5
13	31
14	73
15	137
16	197
17	278
Grand Total	721

 

3. A total of 16 of the above cases were held post-charge.

4.A total of 14 of the above cases involved a request to a local authority to accommodate those children.

5. A breakdown of requests for secure and non-secure accommodation:

Secure	11
Non-Secure	3

 

6. A total of 2 of these cases were successfully transferred to local authority accommodation.