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 you tell me over the last 5 years: calendar years from January 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 to December 31st 2017
- how many domestic violence crimes have been reported to the police
- how many of these cases have been investigated
- how many cases led to an arrest
- how many cases led to a prosecution
- if the prosecution failed please can you give me the reason stated
In Response:
We have now had the opportunity to fully consider your request and I provide a response for your attention.
Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted within Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held in part by Northumbria Police, however, cannot be disclosed for the following reasons.
The information specific to your request at question 5 is not held in a format that allows its retrieval within the permitted time constraints. The only way to obtain the reason for a case failing would be to examine each one. For the time period of your request, there have been thousands of cases which would take at least 15 minutes to review each one. We have estimated that to extract this information would take that part of your request over the 18 hour threshold. 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 for that part of 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 below, relative to your remaining questions which was 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.
1.
Year |
Number of Crimes |
2013 |
5541 |
2014 |
7184 |
2015 |
9195 |
2016 |
14662 |
2017 |
21257 |
Total |
57839 |
2. All crimes are investigated.
3.
Year |
Number of Arrests |
2013 |
4394 |
2014 |
5402 |
2015 |
5212 |
2016 |
4321 |
2017 |
3541 |
Total |
22870 |
4. |
|||||||||
Method of Disposal |
2013 |
2014 |
2015 |
2016 |
2017 |
Total |
|||
Charge/Summons |
3061 |
3764 |
3834 |
3385 |
3436 |
17480 |
|||
Charge/Summons Alternative offence |
|
1 |
74 |
13 |
88 |
||||
Total |
3061 |
3764 |
3835 |
3459 |
3449 |
17568 |