PNC Statistics 2021

Keywords

People, Wanted, PNC, Offence, Crime, Category, Listed, Missing, Locate, Nationwide, National.

Publication Number

PUB 1469

FOI Reference Number

17057

Request Title

PNC Statistics 2021

Date Range

N/A

Information Requested

I'd like to request the following information, as of the most recent date for which information is held:

1. How many people are currently wanted by your force on PNC? Please provide details on the offence/crime category.

2. How many people are currently listed as missing by your force on PNC?

3. How many people are currently listed as 'locate' by your force on PNC? Please separate this data by the reason why the police would like to locate the individual. 

4. If your force holds any nation-wide data for the above questions, please also provide national data for Q1-3.

Disclosure with Exemptions

Part Disclosure with Section 12 Exemption

Information Correct as at

18 May 2022

Date of Disclosure

23 May 2022

Related Documents/Links

N/A

FOI 17057 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 1 and 3, Essex Police are unable to accurately extract the level of detail in relation to your request for the requested period 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 from PNC and reviewing each record one by one to establish the offence/crime category and why the Police would like to locate the individuals if held.  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:

Caveats: The data is correct as at 18 May 2022.

The most recent date that we hold information for is 30 April 2022.

1. How many people are currently wanted by your force on PNC?

There are 1838.

2. How many people are currently listed as missing by your force on PNC?

There are 321.

3. How many people are currently listed as 'locate' by your force on PNC?

There are 162.

4. If your force holds any nation-wide data for the above questions, please also provide national data for Q1-3.

No, we do not hold nationwide data.

 

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.