Crimes - Suspect Under 10 - 433/20

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:

Please can I request the following information about all crimes investigated from September 5 2019 until March 5 2020 where no further action was taken because the suspect was aged under 10.

In each individual case can I please request:

- Year of offence (including date if possible)

- Offence

- Town/city (or, if unavailable, police division area)

- Number of suspects

- Age of all suspects

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.

It should be noted that whilst the sexual offending is clearly a criminal offence and therefore recorded as such under guidelines, a proportion of these could be categorised as being ‘sexual experimentation’ and therefore whilst a crime, it would not necessarily be as potentially sinister as if read without suitable context. Clearly whilst all such activity still raises concerns and the relevant agencies would have been involved in the multi-agency response to understand and address the underlying risk issues, we ask you to bear in mind that the response is not simply that ‘no further action’ was taken in these cases.  

With the above noted I am able to disclose the located information to you in the attached document and this should satisfy your queries.