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 people arrested since last April were released on pre-charge bail. (01/04/2017 to present)
2.How many people arrested between April 2016 and March 2017 were released on pre-charge bail. (01/04/2016 – 31/03/2017)
3.What proportion of arrests over the two periods resulted in pre-charge bail. By ‘proportion’, what percentage of arrests between 01/04/2017 – present and 01/04/206 – 31/03/2017 led to people being released on bail.
4.How many people arrested since last April were released under investigation. (01/04/2017 – present)
5.How many people arrested between April 2016 and March 2017 were released under investigation. (01/04/2016 – 31/03/2017)
6.What proportion of arrests over the two periods resulted in release under investigation. (By ‘proportion’, what percentage of arrests between 01/04/2017 – present and 01/04/206 – 31/03/2017 led to people being released under investigation)
7.The average length of time for which people have been released under investigation since April 2017. (01/04/2017 – present)
We then sought clarity on all of your questions and I have written your amendments into the above
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 with the Corporate Development Department of Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held by Northumbria Police, however cannot be disclosed for the following reasons.
The information specific to your request is not held in a format that allows its retrieval within the permitted time constraints. In 2016/17 alone there were 18764 individuals arrested. In order to provide a total for the number of people who were released on pre-charge bail or under investigation, we would have to manually review the bail history on each individual’s record. Even at a conservative estimate of 3 minutes per record, which we have considered as reasonable, we have estimated that to extract this information would take over 938 hours, 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.
When applying Section 12 exemption our duty to assist under Section 16 of the Act would normally entail that we contact you to determine whether it is possible to refine the scope of your request to bring it within the cost limits. However, from the information we have outlined above I see no reasonable way in which we can do so.
