Drug Related Offences Relating to Under 18’s 2015 to 2022
Keywords
Drugs; Arrests; Under 18’s; Custody; Controlled; Supply; Possession; Intent; Primary; Secondary; High School; Academy;
Publication Number
PUB 1128
Publication Title
Drug Related Offences Relating to Under 18’s 2015 to 2022
FOI Reference Numbers
FOIs 18393, 14356, 14342, 13329
FOI 18393
Request Title
Children Arrested for Supplying Drugs 2022
Date Range
January to December 2022
Information Requested
- How many arrests have your police force made for the offences of supplying controlled drugs or possession with intent to supply controlled drugs in the last year (2022 calendar year) for young persons aged sixteen or under?
- Please provide if possible the figures for each age group i.e. ten, eleven, twelve etc and also broken down by gender for each of the two offences, breaking the alleged offences down by Class A and Class B drugs.
- For those children who were arrested AND were aged 13 or under please provide specific details on the charge they were arrested on and the exact type and class of drug they were alleged to have been involved with as well as their age.
Disclosure with Exemptions
Partial disclosure with Section 12 exemption
Information Correct as at
12 April 2023
Date of Disclosure
17 April 2023
FOI 14342 Response
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.
However, where exemptions are relied upon (Section 17 of FOIA), there is a requirement to provide the applicant with an explanation either:
- a) stating the fact
- b) detailing the exemption(s) in question and
- c) why the exemption applies (if not apparent).
Information Request
- How many arrests have your police force made for the offences of supplying controlled drugs or possession with intent to supply controlled drugs in the last year (2022 calendar year) for young persons aged sixteen or under?
- Please provide if possible the figures for each age group i.e. ten, eleven, twelve etc and also broken down by gender for each of the two offences, breaking the alleged offences down by Class A and Class B drugs.
- For those children who were arrested AND were aged 13 or under please provide specific details on the charge they were arrested on and the exact type and class of drug they were alleged to have been involved with as well as their age.
FOI Duty
First Duty – Essex Police holds some of the information relating to your request
Second Duty – See below
Fact - It is not possible to extract and verify all the data in your request
Exemption - Section 12(1)
Refusal - Section 17(5) of FOIA
Reasoning -
With regard to Question 2 and Question 3, it is not possible to accurately extract data on the Class or specific type of drug to which each arrest relates as the Reason For Arrest (RFA) categories on our crime recording system do not specifically cover both those details. Extracting this information would require a manual examination of each arrest record to ascertain what information on the specific Class and type of drug was recorded and then extracting and collating it into a bespoke report. To do so would exceed the time and cost limits of an FOI request.
Duty to assist - When refusing a request on cost (Section 12(1)/12(2), outside of the act and in effort to assist we can provide the following
Essex Police can report as follows:
Caveat: The following data is correct as at 12 April 2023
Question 1:
The following is the total number of Arrests of Children aged 16 & Under during 2022:
Total = 195
Question 2:
The age group:
12 to 16 years
The gender breakdown is as follows:
Female = 13
Male = 182
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.
FOI 13329
Request title
Drug Arrests Under 18s
Information requested
How many under 18s have been arrested in the past five calendar years for the supply of illegal drugs, or for possession with intent to supply? Please can I have this information broken down per calendar year.
Date range
January 2015 to December 2020
Information correct as at
22/02/21
Updated details
Drug Arrests under 18s 2015 – 2020
|
|
2015 |
2016 |
2017 |
2018 |
2019 |
2020 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Total under 18’s arrested |
88 |
115 |
185 |
216 |
242 |
239 |
Please note: we are no longer able to access arrest data pre April 2015 so the data for 2015 only includes April to December 2015.
This data includes RFA description =
"Drugs - Concerned in supplying controlled drug"
"Drugs - Possession With Intent to supply - Class A"
"Drugs - Possession With Intent to supply - other than Class A"
"Drugs - Supplying controlled drug"
FOI 14342
Request title
Drugs in Schools
Date range
2015 to 2019.
(Data has not been updated to cover 2020 as the data would not be representative because of school closures due to COVID-19 pandemic)
Information requested
I am seeking information concerning how many times illegal drugs have been seized or confiscated from school premises in the period from 1st January 2015 to the end of 31st December 2019.
1: A year by year breakdown of the number of times police were called to seize or confiscate illegal drugs from school premises in the period from 1st January 2015 to the 31st of December 2019. Schools include; primary school, secondary school, academies and sixth form colleges.
2: What was the type of drug involved on each occasion?
3: What was the amount or volume of the drug involved on each occasion?
4: What was the gender of the person it was seized from on each occasion?
5: How old was the person it was seized from on each occasion? Please specify in the following age ranges: 0-11, 12-16, or 17+
Disclosure with exemptions
Full
Information correct as at
22.04.20
Date of disclosure
22.04.20
FOI 14342 response
Caveat: The date period is from 01/01/2015 to 31/12/2019. Any keyword search may not be entirely accurate and any results would not necessarily answer your submission, and, therefore, could be highly inaccurate and misleading.
1. The below table represents the number of all Drug Offences crimes where the Location Premises Name Field looked at keywords such as “primary school”, “secondary school”, “high school”, “academy” and “college”. The word “sixth form” is not recorded on our system.
|
Year |
2015 |
2016 |
2017 |
2018 |
2019 |
Grand Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Grand Total |
16 |
20 |
21 |
16 |
26 |
99 |
2. The below table represents number of all Drug Offences crimes by Crime Offence Title (which provides the type of drugs involved) by year.
Crime Offence Title is used instead of the Property Name Field because the Property Name Field is not consistently used in our system, therefore, it would not reflect the true results.
|
Crime Offence Title |
2015 |
2016 |
2017 |
2018 |
2019 |
Grand Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Having possession of a controlled drug - Class B - Cannabis |
16 |
13 |
17 |
16 |
24 |
86 |
|
Having possession of a controlled drug - Class B - Amphetamine |
2 |
2 |
||||
|
Possession of a controlled drug with intent to supply - Class B - Cannabis |
1 |
1 |
2 |
|||
|
Having possession of a controlled drug - Class A - MDMA |
2 |
2 |
||||
|
Having possession of a controlled drug - Class A - Cocaine |
2 |
2 |
||||
|
Supplying or offering to supply a controlled drug - Class A - Crack |
1 |
1 |
||||
|
Possession of a controlled drug with intent to supply a class B controlled drug |
1 |
1 |
||||
|
Possession of a controlled drug with intent to supply - Class A - MDMA |
1 |
1 |
||||
|
Supplying or offering to supply a controlled drug - Class C - Other |
1 |
1 |
||||
|
Having possession of a controlled drug - Class C - Other |
1 |
1 |
||||
|
Grand Total |
16 |
20 |
21 |
16 |
26 |
99 |
3. The Quantity Field is not consistently used in our system, therefore, we cannot provide this information as it would not reflect true results. We do not record the quantity seized in an extractable format, we have to provide this data once a year to the Home Office. This is collected in a manual spreadsheet and we would need to join this data together with Athena to provide the quantity. This 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.
4 & 5. The below table represents the number of suspects identified of the above crimes, that are 10 years of age (age of criminal responsibility) or above by gender.
The number of suspects identified is less than the number of crimes due to the quality of crime recording. The data inconsistencies have been highlighted to the force.
|
Age by Gender |
2015 |
2016 |
2017 |
2018 |
2019 |
Grand Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Female |
3 |
3 |
3 |
5 |
6 |
20 |
|
12 |
1 |
1 |
2 |
|||
|
13 |
1 |
1 |
2 |
1 |
5 |
|
|
14 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
3 |
7 |
|
15 |
2 |
1 |
3 |
|||
|
17 |
1 |
1 |
||||
|
18 |
1 |
1 |
||||
|
29 |
1 |
1 |
||||
|
Male |
8 |
17 |
15 |
13 |
21 |
74 |
|
11 |
1 |
1 |
||||
|
12 |
1 |
1 |
2 |
|||
|
13 |
1 |
3 |
2 |
3 |
9 |
|
|
14 |
4 |
2 |
1 |
5 |
4 |
16 |
|
15 |
2 |
4 |
3 |
3 |
12 |
|
|
16 |
1 |
2 |
1 |
2 |
4 |
10 |
|
17 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
3 |
1 |
7 |
|
18 |
3 |
2 |
1 |
6 |
||
|
19 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
|||
|
21 |
3 |
3 |
||||
|
27 |
1 |
1 |
||||
|
33 |
1 |
1 |
||||
|
40 |
2 |
2 |
||||
|
47 |
1 |
1 |
||||
|
Grand Total |
11 |
20 |
18 |
18 |
27 |
94 |
Every effort is made to ensure that figures provided are accurate and complete, however, Essex Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not primarily for the production of statistical information. Please note although data can be extracted from a number of sources via database queries the results are subject to inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system and could also be inaccurate as a result of free text entry fields. Care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting data.
Essex Police trusts that the information provided is of assistance. Thank you for your interest in Essex Police.
FOI 14356
Request title
Drug arrests 2019 – Aged 16 and Under
Information requested
1. How many arrests have your police force made for the offences of supplying controlled drugs or possession with intent to supply controlled drugs in the last year (2019 calendar year) for young persons aged sixteen or under?
2. Please provide if possible the figures for each age group i.e. ten, eleven, twelve etc and also broken down by gender for each of the two offences, breaking the alleged offences down by Class A and Class B drugs.
3. For those children who were arrested AND were aged 13 or under please provide specific details on the charge they were arrested on and the exact type and class of drug they were alleged to have been involved with.
Date range
01/01/19 to 31/12/19
Disclosure with exemptions
Full
Information correct as at
21/04/20
Date of disclosure
06/05/20
FOI 14356 response
Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) places two duties on public authorities. Unless exemptions apply, the first duty at Sec1(1)(a) is to confirm or deny whether the information specified in a request is held. The second duty at Sec1(1)(b) is to disclose information that has been confirmed as being held. Where exemptions are relied upon s17 of 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. How many arrests have your police force made for the offences of supplying controlled drugs or possession with intent to supply controlled drugs in the last year (2019 calendar year) for young persons aged sixteen or under?
2. Please provide if possible the figures for each age group i.e. ten, eleven, twelve etc and also broken down by gender for each of the two offences, breaking the alleged offences down by Class A and Class B drugs.
3. For those children who were arrested AND were aged 13 or under please provide specific details on the charge they were arrested on and the exact type and class of drug they were alleged to have been involved with.
Having completed enquiries within Essex Police and in respect of Section 1(1)(a), Essex Police does hold information relating to your request. Under Section 1(1)(b) the below has been provided in relation to your FOI.
The data provided is from 01/01/2019 to 31/12/2019 – as requested by applicant.
The below table represents number of arrested children (16 years of age and younger), where the Reason for Arrest was; “Drugs – Supplying controlled drug”, “Drugs – Possession With Intent to supply – Class A” and / or “Drugs – Possession With Intent to supply – other than Class A”.
|
Age / Gender / Reason for Arrest |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
Grand Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Female |
1 |
2 |
3 |
6 |
|
|
Drugs - Possession With Intent to supply - Class A |
1 |
2 |
3 |
||
|
Drugs - Possession With Intent to supply - other than Class A |
1 |
1 |
1 |
3 |
|
|
Male |
1 |
14 |
41 |
59 |
115 |
|
Drugs - Possession With Intent to supply - Class A |
1 |
4 |
18 |
24 |
47 |
|
Drugs - Possession With Intent to supply - other than Class A |
10 |
20 |
33 |
63 |
|
|
Drugs - Supplying controlled drug |
3 |
2 |
5 |
||
|
Grand Total |
1 |
15 |
43 |
62 |
121 |
We are unable to provide details on exact reason for arrest or exact drug type / class, as these details are only recorded as shown in the table above.
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.
In providing the figures an issue has been identified with regards the completeness and potentially the accuracy of the data return. These concerns have been reported to the relevant business areas and will be investigated and addressed. The Force Information Management Board, chaired by the Deputy Chief Constable has oversight of the Force wide programme of work to improve the quality of Force data. This work has identified data quality leads in all key areas of the business. Liaison between the Force Data Quality team and the data quality business area leads will identify and resolve issues through a variety of mechanisms to ensure regular and appropriate supervisory oversight.
Essex Police trusts that the information provided is of assistance. Thank you for your interest in Essex Police.