Arrests - Engaging in Sexual Activity in a Public Lavatory - 2016 to 2021
Keywords
Arrests, Sexual, Activity, Public, Lavatory, Engaging, Age, Arrested, Notifiable, Offence, Counting, Rules.
Publication Number
PUB 1451
FOI Reference Number
16403
Request Title
Arrests - Engaging in Sexual Activity in a Public Lavatory - 2016 to 2021
Date Range
July 2016 to June 2021
Information Requested
I would like to request information on the number of arrests made in Essex for ‘engaging in sexual activity in a public lavatory’ for the following 6 month periods:
July - December 2016
January - June 2017
July - December 2017
January - June 2018
July - December 2018
January - June 2019
July - December 2019
January - June 2020
July - December 2020
January - June 2021.
I would like the data to be organised by the age of the individual being arrested in the following categories:
under 20 years of age
21-30
31-40
41-50
51-60
61-70
71-80
81-90
91+ (if applicable)
Disclosure with Exemptions
Full Refusal with Section 12 Exemption
Information Correct as at
22 April 2022
Date of Disclosure
27 April 2022
Related Documents/Links
FOI 16403 Response
Having completed enquiries within Essex Police in respect of Section 1(1)(a), Essex Police does hold information relating to your request, however, the obligation of Section 1(1)(b) cannot be met as Essex Police does not hold all the information requested in a format that allows it to be retrieved within the time and cost limits of FOI.
When responding to a request for information under the terms of the FOIA, a public authority is not obliged to provide information if the authority estimates that the cost of the retrieval of the information requested would be in excess of £450 (equivalent to 18 hours work). The costs criteria relates to a request in its entirety, which means that if we cannot retrieve all of the information requested within the costs limit, we are not obliged to retrieve any of the information requested.
Section 12(1) of the FOIA states that a public authority is not obliged to:
“…comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.”
The following explanation outlines the difficulty Essex Police has in answering your request:
Essex Police are unable to accurately extract the level of detail in relation to your request for the requested periods from our current systems. Essex Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not primarily for the production of statistical information for FOI responses. This request would entail manually extracting the requested data for arrests during the periods and reviewing each case one by one to establish the information if held as we do not have a reason for arrest for this offence on our Custody system, so any arrests would be recorded as ‘other’ and, therefore, would not be easily identifiable. To establish if information is held would, therefore, exceed the time and cost limits under the FOIA and would qualify as the creation of data as the results cannot be processed by means of purely sorting or filtering data sources or running a database query tool. There is no requirement under the act to create data purely to answer FOI requests.
Consequently, and to this extent, Essex Police are exempt from the duty to provide information you have requested under the provisions of Section 12(1) of the FOIA. Therefore, and in accordance with Section 17(1) of the FOIA, this communication must act as a refusal notice to provide all of the information that could be interpreted as being captured by this part of your request.
Having said that, and in an effort to assist, although excess cost removes the force’s obligations under the FOIA, Essex Police can confirm the following:
Caveat: The data is correct as at 22 April 2022.
As an alternative, we have looked at recorded crime. Unfortunately, this offence is non notifiable, therefore, Essex Police do not have a statutory requirement to record a crime record for this case. It is not part of the Home Office Counting Rules. Therefore, we cannot provide alternative data from our Crime system.
Section 16(1) of the FOIA provides that a public authority is required to provide advice and assistance, Essex Police can advise that the following link provides the principles under which reports received from victims are recorded and gives details regarding Police recorded crime statistics based on a notifiable list as set out by the Home Office Counting Rules. These offences are more likely to be extracted from our systems together with outcomes and age if required
Counting rules for recorded crime
The intention of Section 16 is to provide assistance in resubmitting a valid request. Please note that any advice and assistance under Section 16 regarding resubmission of a request does not indicate that resubmission will provide a full disclosure, each submission will be assessed and if a disclosure is deemed harmful, then the appropriate exemptions will apply.