Released Under Investigation and Pre-Charge Bail Statistics 2018 to 2021

Keywords

Release, Under, Investigation, RUI, Split, Crime, Sub, Groups, Types, Home, Office, Classification, Codes, Index, Average, Number, Days, Individuals, Charged, Outcome, Pre-Charge, Bail.

Publication Number

PUB 1282

FOI Reference Number

16185

Request Title

Released Under Investigation and Pre-Charge Bail Statistics

Date Range

2018 to 2021

Information Requested

I am writing to make a request for all the information to which I am entitled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

James Stott made a similar request in 2020 which may be relevant to forces who replied with information. This request, however, extends and expands beyond that request.

-Released under investigation

1. How many people did your force release ‘under investigation’ each month from June 2018 up to and including August 2021?

2. For request 1, please may this be split by crime sub groups for all crime types (see HO Offence Classification index. For example, violence against the person offences are split into homicides, violence with injury, violence without injury, stalking and harassment, death or serious injury caused by unlawful driving)?

3. For request 1, for each month, please can you state the average number of days these individuals were under investigation (prior to being charged or any other outcome was given)?

-Pre-charge bail

4. How many people did your force release on pre-charge bail each month from June 2018 up to and including August 2021?

5. For request 4, for each month, please may this be split by crime sub groups for all crime types (see HO Offence Classification index. For example, violence against the person offences are split into homicides, violence with injury, violence without injury, stalking and harassment, death or serious injury caused by unlawful driving)?

6. For request 4, for each month, please can you state the average number of days these individuals were placed on pre-charge bail (prior to being charged or any other outcome was given)?

Disclosure with Exemptions

Part Disclosure with Section 12(1) and Section 17(1) Exemptions

Information Correct as at

26 October 2021

Date of Disclosure

28 October 2021

Related Documents/Links

N/A

FOI 16185 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 and 5, 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.  We are unable to provide details such as the crime types these individuals have been arrested for as the system creates too many duplicates due to number of times a person has been bailed/re-bailed.  This request would entail manually extracting the requested data and reviewing each record one by one to establish the information.  To establish the information 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 26 October 2021.

Date Range:  01 June 2018 to 31 August 2021.

The below table represent a sum of unique counts of reference number, meaning some individuals are initially bailed and later Released Under Investigation RUI), therefore, only the first instance of bail or RUI is counted in this dataset.

Year / Month	Bail	RUI	Grand Total
2018	1645	2466	4111
Jun	262	343	605
Jul	244	357	601
Aug	225	288	513
Sep	201	284	485
Oct	250	263	513
Nov	238	443	681
Dec	225	488	713
2019	3200	7472	10672
Jan	264	804	1068
Feb	258	736	994
Mar	250	593	843
Apr	217	697	914
May	255	547	802
Jun	219	438	657
Jul	287	411	698
Aug	292	345	637
Sep	259	347	606
Oct	287	301	588
Nov	348	1222	1570
Dec	264	1031	1295
2020	4166	7305	11471
Jan	324	655	979
Feb	270	595	865
Mar	338	701	1039
Apr	311	682	993
May	338	695	1033
Jun	394	575	969
Jul	405	609	1014
Aug	375	476	851
Sep	372	445	817
Oct	346	533	879
Nov	350	721	1071
Dec	343	618	961
2021	3459	4359	7818
Jan	372	593	965
Feb	333	553	886
Mar	373	625	998
Apr	343	620	963
May	401	496	897
Jun	405	506	911
Jul	478	497	975
Aug	754	469	1223
Grand Total	12470	21602	34072

The average length of time a person was RUI/on bail is not available in the Athena Custody system, therefore, we are unable to provide this information.  Under the FOIA, there is no requirement to create data purely to answer FOI requests.

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.