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 reports of sexual assault, including rape, reported to the Northumbria Police in the years 2019 and in 2020 number of reports that have been identified as having taken place on school premise?
2. How many of these allegations of sexual assault, including rape, reported to the Northumbria Police were made against another student?
3. What action was taken in respect of the students who were found to have committed sexual assault?
4. How many of these allegations of sexual assault, including rape, reported to the Northumbria Police were made against a staff-member?
5. What action was taken in respect of the staff members who were found to have committed sexual misconduct?
6. How many of reports of sexual assault reported on schools premises to the Northumbria Police were upheld?
7. What steps are taken to investigate complaints of sexual assault on school premises by the Northumbria Police ?
In Response:
Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted within 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 with the caveats below noted.
Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.
The data has been taken from systems using the crime and disposal tables. The data has then reviewed to ascertain the victim and offender status (student or other).
All properties with classroom or school identified in the property type have been included.
It should be noted that some of these offences relate to special schools where the pupils may not have full capacity to understand the effects of their actions.
The offences recorded may not relate to anyone attached to the premise, and could just have happened at that place, i.e. school grounds.
With all the above noted I respond as follows.
1.
|
Year |
Count |
|
2019 |
78 |
|
2020 |
63 |
2.
|
Year |
Count |
|
2019 |
73 |
|
2020 |
62 |
3.
|
Outcome |
Count |
|
2019 |
50 |
|
Caution adult |
1 |
|
Evidential difficulties |
13 |
|
Investigation complete - no suspect identified |
1 |
|
Investigation not in public interest |
3 |
|
Not in public interest (police) |
4 |
|
Other agency action |
2 |
|
Outcome 22 |
2 |
|
Suspect too ill |
1 |
|
Suspect under 10 years old |
7 |
|
Victim does not support police action |
15 |
|
YOT triage |
1 |
|
2020 |
24 |
|
Evidential difficulties |
12 |
|
Not in public interest (police) |
1 |
|
Other agency action |
1 |
|
Suspect under 10 years old |
2 |
|
Victim does not support police action |
8 |
4.
|
Year |
Count |
|
2019 |
3 |
|
2020 |
1 |
5.
|
Outcome |
Count |
|
2019 |
3 |
|
Charge/Summons |
1 |
|
Evidential difficulties |
1 |
|
Other agency action |
1 |
|
2020 |
1 |
|
Offender deceased |
1 |
6. All of the above were crimed and therefore deemed to be upheld.
7.
Referrals which are made directly to Northumbria Police control room are ethically crime recorded at source and then allocated out to the most appropriate investigative response dependant on the nature of the offence. As part of the response to these incidents a Child Concern notification can also be made into our Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub.
Referrals which are made from partner agencies including schools relating to sexual misconduct which are not directly reported to police are triaged within the MASH by police and children’s social care and any crimes disclosed are recorded. A discussion takes place within the MASH as to whether the nature of the disclosure warrants a single agency or joint agency visit to child and family to determine what action they wish to be taken.
Crimes are allocated to our Investigation Unit to investigate with a proportionate approach being taken to the investigation dependant on the level of offending. The wishes of victim and family are also taken into consideration.
Northumbria Police have three schools coordinators who have close links with schools DSL’s and they also have regular contact with LA Education leads.
They arrange our education deliveries into schools which cover a range of safeguarding topics including sexual exploitation, consent and healthy relationships.
We have a webpage for schools to access education packages and this also provides information about how to report a crime to Northumbria Police
Operation Hydrant is the national police response to “Everyone’s Invited” peer on peer abuse within schools and Northumbria Police has a spoc in force who receives referrals from Op Hydrant and allocates these crimes out for investigation.
If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors/caveats highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.
