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Screened Out Crime - 1382/19

Date Responded 13 November 2019

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:

Under the Freedom of Information Act can I ask for the following information on crimes that that were reported but not investigated (i.e. screened out).  Please could I have information on:

  1. Please can you tell me how many crimes reported to your force have been screened out so far in 2019, and in each of the previous three calendar years (2018; 2017; 2016)?
  2. Can you also provide a breakdown of this information by type of crime, so that it shows the following categories:
  3. All crimes
  4. Domestic burglaries
  5. Rape and sexual offences
  6. Robbery
  7. For each crime type, please could you provide
  8. The total number of crimes that were screened out
  9. The percentage this is of all reported crimes in this category

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 not held by Northumbria Police.

We are unable to answer your request as we can only provide the screening status of the crime as of the day the data was extracted.  The screening status can change at any point – a crime which was initially screened out may be screened in if and when new information becomes available.  We would not be able to establish if a crime which is now screened in has previously been screened out.  Also, we cannot identify those which have been screened out on the same day as they were reported.

Screened out means no further enquiries/investigation necessary.  For example, when an individual is charged then no further enquiries are necessary and therefore the crime would be closed as detected and is screened out.  The count of crimes screened out will not necessarily be those that have not gone beyond initial assessment.

We are therefore unable to offer a response to your queries above.

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.

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