Drug Arrests - 504/22

Date Responded 26 April 2022

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:

1. How many arrests have your police force made for the offences of supplying controlled drugs or possession with intent to supply controlled drugs in the last year (2021 calendar year) for young persons aged sixteen or under?

2. Please provide if possible the figures for each age group i.e. ten, eleven, twelve etc and also broken down by gender for each of the two offences, breaking the alleged offences down by Class A and Class B drugs.

3. For those children who were arrested AND were aged 13 or under please provide specific details on the charge they were arrested on and the exact type and class of drug they were alleged to have been involved with as well as their age.

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 with the caveats noted as follows.

• Please note the definition of "charge" - an individual would be arrested on suspicion and then later charged. As such Q3 has been answered using the offence that they were charged with. Furthermore, note that an arrest may not always result in a charge.

• 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.

1&2.

Gender	Count
F	0
M	12

Age	Count
16	7
15	2
14	2
13	1

Class	Count
Class A	4
Class B	8

3. To note individuals are only arrested on suspicion of an offence and not a charge. A charge will follow is there is evidence to warrant this. In addition an individual may be arrested but the arrest could result in a NFA which does not lead to a charge at all. Therefore for the purpose of our response we are taking it that you are asking what the offence they were charged with was.

Charge	Concerned in offer supply Cannabis (Class B)
Drug	Cannabis - Class B
Age	13

Disclaimer

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.

The information we have supplied to you is likely to contain intellectual property rights of Northumbria Police. Your use of the information must be strictly in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) or such other applicable legislation. In particular, you must not re-use this information for any commercial purpose.