Charged with Sexual Grooming HO 88A - 2020 to 2021
Keywords
Charged, Sexual, Grooming, Internet, Contact, Communicate, Victim, Websites, Forums, Meeting, Male, Female, Child, Offender, Communication, Home Office, Crimes, Count, Classification, Charged, Code, Social Media, Platforms.
Publication Number
PUB 1350
FOI Reference Number
16347
Request Title
Charged with Sexual Grooming HO 88A - 2020 to 2021
Date Range
2020 to 2021
Information Requested
1. In the last financial year 2020/21 please state how many people were charged by your force with sexual grooming (Home Office Offence code: 88A).
2. Of these people how many of them used the internet in ANY way to contact/communicate with their victim?
3. Taking the subset of people who used the internet in some way could you please list the websites/forums that were used by these people to communicate?
Disclosure with Exemptions
Full Refusal with Section 12 Exemption
Information Correct as at
31 March 2021
Date of Disclosure
29 November 2021
Related Documents/Links
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-recorded-crime-open-data-tables
FOI 16347 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:
In relation to Questions 2 & 3, Essex Police are unable to accurately extract the level of detail in relation to your request 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. To establish if information is held on whether the internet was used in any way to contact / communicate with the victim and also to determine the list of websites / forums that were used by the alleged perpetrators would mean a manual review of each record held to determine the use or not of the internet and the type of website / forum noted against that offence. This 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 in respect of Question 1, although excess cost removes the force’s obligations under the FOIA, Essex Police can confirm the following data for the time frame 01 April 2019 to 31 March 2021:
The Home office Offence Code 88A is split into three categories:
88/1 Meeting a female child following sexual grooming etc (Offender is aged 18 or over and victim is under 16). Sexual Offences Act 2003 Sec 15.
88/2 Meeting a male child following sexual grooming etc. (Offender is 18 or over and victim is under 16). Sexual Offences Act 2003 Sec 15.
71/17 Engage in sexual communication with a child. Sexual Offences Act 2003 Sec 15A (1) and (3) as amended by Serious Crime Act 2015 Sec 67.
|
Created Fiscal Year |
Home Office Classification |
Count of Crimes |
|---|---|---|
|
2019 |
071/17 |
208 |
|
2019 |
088/01 |
21 |
|
2019 |
088/02 |
6 |
|
2020 |
071/17 |
266 |
|
2020 |
088/01 |
13 |
|
2020 |
088/02 |
1 |
Every effort is made to ensure that the data provided by Essex Police is accurate and complete. However, Essex Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not for the purposes of providing data to answer specific FOI enquiries. Please note although data can be extracted from a number of sources via database queries, the results may be subject to inaccuracies. Care should be taken to understand our return when considering the interpretation or further use of the data.
Section 16(1) of the FOIA provides that a public authority is required to provide advice and assistance. Essex Police can confirm that the crime outcomes in respect of Essex Police are collated and published by the Office for National Statistics routinely. The following link was made available 04 November 2021 in respect of the most recent reporting period and further links within that same website can direct the researcher to other offence codes and other reporting periods:
Police recorded crime and outcomes open data tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
FOI Reference Number
16347
Request Title
Charged with Sexual Grooming HO 88A - 2020 to 2021
Date Range
2020 to 2021
Information Requested
1. In the last financial year 2020/21 please state how many people were charged by your force with sexual grooming (Home Office Offence code: 88A).
2. Of these people how many of them used the internet in ANY way to contact/communicate with their victim?
3. Taking the subset of people who used the internet in some way could you please list the websites/forums that were used by these people to communicate?
Disclosure with Exemptions
Full Refusal with Section 12 Exemption
Information Correct as at
24 December 2021
Date of Disclosure
24 December 2021
Related Documents/Links
N/A
FOI 16347 Response
Further to our previous disclosure, the following information has now become available and crime statistics have been updated, I hope this updated data is of interest
Thank you for your enquiry which has been logged under the above reference.
Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) places two duties on public authorities. Unless exemptions apply, the first duty at Section 1(1)(a) is to confirm or deny whether the information specified in a request is held. The second duty at Section 1(1)(b) is to disclose information that has been confirmed as being held. Where exemptions are relied upon Section 17 of the FOIA requires that we provide the applicant with a notice which: a) states that fact b) specifies the exemption(s) in question and c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.
In respect of your enquiry:
1. In the last financial year 2020/21 please state how many people were charged by your force with sexual grooming (Home Office Offence code: 88A).
2. Of these people how many of them used the internet in ANY way to contact/communicate with their victim?
3. Taking the subset of people who used the internet in some way could you please list the websites/forums that were used by these people to communicate?
Having completed enquiries within Essex Police in respect of Section 1(1)(a), Essex Police does hold information relating to your request, Essex Police can confirm in respect of Section 1(1)(b) the following data:
Data correct as at 24th December 2021
1. In the last financial year 2020/21 please state how many people were charged by your force with sexual grooming (Home Office Offence code: 88A).
34
2. Of these people how many of them used the internet in ANY way to contact/communicate with their victim?
17 had Cyber-Enabled/Online flag, although 31 incident summaries make reference to online communications.
3. Taking the subset of people who used the internet in some way could you please list the websites/forums that were used by these people to communicate?
Where detailed within the Incident Summary the following social media platforms are referred to:
- Instagram 13
- Facebook 2
- Snapchat 4
- Kik 3
- TikTok 1
- Google Hangouts 1
- 7 unspecified online communications involving online vigilante/paedophile hunter groups posing as children in online chat forums.