Vagrancy Act - 1198/23

Date Responded 25 August 2023

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 inform me of the number of:

A) Arrests

B) Convictions

C) Fines/surcharges

D) Conditional charges

E) Custody/ custodies

your police force has carried out in enforcing the Vagrancy Act of 1824, each broken down by ethnicity, over the last five calendar years (2018-2022).

In Response:

Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Corporate Development & Criminal Justice Department of Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held in part by Northumbria Police.

I am able to disclose the located information to you as follows with all the below caveats noted .

• The data was extracted from systems where the offence searched for was one of the following:

Resisting or obstructing constables
Offences by prostitutes: Second conviction as an idle and disorderly person
Begging, wandering abroad or being in any street etc; begging or gathering alms or causing or procuring any child so to do
Sleeping out. Wandering abroad and lodging in any barn, outside deserted or unoccupied building or in the open-air etc
Being on enclosed premises for an unlawful purpose
Other offences (against Vagrancy Acts) -second conviction as an idle and disorderly person
Wandering abroad and exposing fortunes
Collecting alms or endeavouring to procure charitable contributions by fraudulent pretence
Pretending or professing to tell fortunes
Peddlers; trading prostitutes; begging alms; idle and disorderly persons

• 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.

Year	Afro/Caribbean	Asian	Dark European	White European	Total
2018	-	1	-	15	16
2019	-	-	1	18	19
2020	1	-	-	4	5
2021	-	-	-	7	7
2022	-	-	-	8	8
Total	1	1	1	52	55

Year
2018	9
2019	10
2020	2
2021	3
2022	2
Total	26

All White European

Year
2018	5
2019	4
2020	1
2021
2022	1
Total	11

All White European

No information held.

Year	Afro/Caribbean	Asian	Dark European	White European	Total
2018	-	1	-	15	16
2019	-	-	1	18	19
2020	1	-	-	4	5
2021	-	-	-	7	7
2022	-	-	-	8	8
Total	1	1	1	52	55

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.