Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003
Keywords
Arrests, Convicted, Conviction, Section 127(1), Section 127(2), Communications Act 2003, Offences, Volumes, Suspicion, Data, Crown Prosecution Service, CPS, Case Records, Case Files, Perpetrator, Charged, Chargeable, Outcomes, Disposal, Decision, Yearly Breakdown, Calendar Years, Recorded, Recordable.
Publication Number
PUB 1194
FOI Reference Number
15326
Request Title
Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003
Date Range
2018-2020
Information Requested
1. How many people have been arrested under suspicion of an offence under Section 127 (1) of the Communications Act 2003? Please provide the figures for: (a) 2018, (b) 2019, (c) 2020.
2. How many people have been convicted of an offence under Section 127 (1) of the Communications Act 2003? Please provide the figures for: (a) 2018, (b) 2019, (c) 2020.
3. How many people have been arrested under suspicion of an offence under Section 127 (2) of the Communications Act 2003? Please provide the figures for: (a) 2018, (b) 2019, (c) 2020.
4. How many people have been convicted of an offence under Section 127 (2) of the Communications Act 2003? Please provide the figures for: (a) 2018, (b) 2019, (c) 2020.
Disclosure with Exemptions
Section 12 Refusal with Alternative Datasets
Information Correct as at
06 April 2021
Date of Disclosure
08 June 2021
Related Documents/Links
N/A
FOI 15326 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 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.
In relation to Questions 1 and 3, this request would entail manually extracting the requested data and then reviewing each investigation report one by one to establish if information is held. Offences under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 are not covered by the reasons for arrest on the Athena Custody system as this section is not a notifiable crime and does, therefore, not need to be submitted to the Home Office for Crime Statistics.
Additionally, in relation to Questions 2 and 4, Essex Police do not record conviction data (this is held by the Crown Prosecution Service). This request would entail manually extracting the requested data, manually reviewing each record one by one to establish if there was a charge and then cross referring on the Police National Computer (PNC) to establish the outcome and conviction data.
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 dataset alternative:
Caveats:
The data is correct as at 06 April 2021.
The numbers of offence volumes linked to case records under Sections 127(1) and 127(2) of the Communications Act 2003 every year from 2018 to 2020 are highlighted in the result tables below. The numbers of these offences leading to the perpetrator being charged for these crimes are also illustrated in the result tables below. One of the reasons or details for recording these offences is that they go against Section 127(1) and (2) of the Communications Act 2003, however, these are not necessarily the only reasons.
Please note this is a count of offences linked to case files and not individuals.
All the relevant data was obtained from the Athena Case system.
The ‘Act and Section’ dimension was used as a filter to select only the Section 127(1) and 127(2) Communications Act 2003 options.
The Offence Disposal/CPS Decision Dimension was used to filter out those Section 127(1) and 127(2) Communications Act 2003 offences for which the perpetrator was charged.
The time period used was from 01 January 2018 to 31 December 2020.
A total of 142 offences have been recorded under Section 127(1) of the Communications Act 2003 between 01 January 2018 and 31 December 2020. The yearly breakdown of these figures is given in Table 1 below:
|
Year |
Number of Offences |
|---|---|
|
2018 |
47 |
|
2019 |
52 |
|
2020 |
43 |
|
Total |
142 |
A total of 54 offences have been recorded under Section 127(2) of the Communications Act 2003 between 01 January 2018 and 31 December 2020. The yearly breakdown of these figures are shown in Table 2 below:
|
Year |
Number of offences |
|---|---|
|
2018 |
11 |
|
2019 |
28 |
|
2020 |
15 |
|
Total |
54 |
A total of 80 offences under Section 127(1) of the Communications Act 2003 led to the perpetrator being charged between 01 January 2018 and 31 December 2020. The yearly breakdown of these figures is given in Table 3 below :
|
Year |
Number of offences |
|---|---|
|
2018 |
31 |
|
2019 |
28 |
|
2020 |
21 |
|
Total |
80 |
A total of 30 offences under Section 127(2) of the Communications Act 2003 led to the perpetrator being charged between 01 January 2018 and 31 December 2020. The yearly breakdown of these figures is given in Table 4 below:
|
Year |
Number of offences |
|---|---|
|
2018 |
4 |
|
2019 |
20 |
|
2020 |
6 |
|
Total |
30 |
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.
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. If work has identified issues with data quality, leads in all key areas of the business together with the Force Data Quality Team will identify and resolve issues through a variety of mechanisms to ensure regular and appropriate supervisory oversight.