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Aiding and Abetting Suicide - 224/20

Date Responded 18 February 2020

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:

  1. The number of recorded crimes, under Section 2(1) of the 1961 Suicide Act, for aiding and abetting suicide between 1st January 2015 and 31st December 2019.
  2. The number of individuals interviewed under caution, in relation to Section 2(1) of the 1961 Suicide Act, for aiding and abetting suicide between 1st January 2015 and 31st December 2019.
  3. The number of individuals charged in relation to Section 2(1) of the 1961 Suicide, for aiding and abetting suicide between 1st January 2015 and 31st December 2019.
  4. The number of individuals arrested in relation to Section 2(1) of the 1961 Suicide, for aiding and abetting suicide between 1st January 2015 and 31st December 2019.

Please can the above information be broken down by each corresponding year?

If it is of any assistance, it is my understanding that Section 2(1) of the 1961 Suicide Act may be recorded as code 76 ‘Aiding Suicide’ by the Home Office.

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 in part by Northumbria Police.

I am able to disclose the located information to you as follows.

  1. Searches made for the following Home Office codes have brought back nil results

076/00  Suicide (aiding, abetting etc)

076/01  Intentionally doing an act capable of encouraging or assisting the suicide or attempted suicide of another

This therefore means that no information is held at points 3-4.

With regards to point 2 we are unable to establish if anyone was interviewed under caution for such offences within the permitted 18 hour threshold. An individual may have been interviewed for such matters but the Home Office code changed at a later date to better reflect the case in question.  We have no way of establishing  if such instances had or had not occurred within the time allowed.

Rather than refused your whole request under Section 12, due to time/costs, we have provided what we are able to as 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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