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:
I am seeking up-to-date information about the proportion of police detentions/interviews of suspects and voluntary interviews in which an appropriate adult (As defined by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 Codes of Practice, principally Code C paragraphs 3.15 and 3.21) was provided and for whom legal advice was obtained as recorded by officers for both adults and juveniles (As defined by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 Code of Practice C paragraph 1.5 as anyone under the age of 18 )
I would be grateful if you could provide the following data for your force area, for the period of the year to 9 March 2020 – This being clarified to 10/3/19 to 9/3/20. :
1 Please indicate the following in relation to everyone (adults and juveniles):
Authorised Detentions Interviews Under Arrest Voluntary Interviews Information not routinely collected
Total Number
Appropriate Adult Provided
Legal Advice Obtained
2 Please indicate the following in relation to juveniles:
Authorised Detentions Interviews Under Arrest Voluntary Interviews Information not routinely collected
Total Number
Looked After Children *
Appropriate Adult Provided
Legal Advice Obtained
(*As defined by the Children’s Act 1989 section 22)
3 Please indicate who acted as the appropriate adult for the juveniles:
Parent/Guardian Social Worker YOT Worker Local Authority Emergency Duty Team Volunteer Other (please specify)
Authorised Detentions
Interviews Under Arrest
Voluntary Interviews
Information not routinely collected
4 Please indicate the ethnicity of the juveniles:
Asian Black Mixed Gypsy/Romany White
Authorised Detentions
Interviews Under Arrest
Voluntary Interviews
Information not routinely collected
5 Please indicate the gender of the juveniles:
Male Female Transgender Transvestite Gender neutral Other
Authorised Detentions
Interviews Under Arrest
Voluntary Interviews
Information not routinely collected
6 I can see that your website provides some guidance relating to voluntary interviews. Do you have any further documents? If so, please could you attach them.
In Response:
Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted within Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held in part by Northumbria Police, however cannot be disclosed for the following reasons.
The information requested is not already held statistically nor is it held in a format that allows its extraction within the permitted 18 hour threshold.
Northumbria Police have approximately 2500 authorised detentions per month. Each of these records would require manual review to extract the information you are asking for.
Even at a conservative estimate of 10 minutes per record, which we have considered as reasonable, we have estimated that to locate, extract and compile this information would take over 416 hours for a one month period, 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 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.
