Sexual Offences on Disabled Individuals - Last 5 Calendar Years
Keywords
Sexual, Offences, Disabled, Individuals, Allegations, Charges, Convictions, Breakdown, Disabilities, Victim, Vulnerability, Marker, Recorded, Offences, Charged, Victim.
Publication Number
PUB 1364
FOI Reference Number
16078
Request Title
Sexual Offences on Disabled Individuals - Last 5 Calendar Years
Date Range
2016 to 2021
Information Requested
Please find below my FOI requests that are for the past 5 calendar years (with the figures being broken down for each year) and apply only to sexual offences of disabled individuals (with the figures being broken down if possible re: if the offences took place when the individual was a child or an adult):
1. Number of allegations per year
2. Number of charges placed per year
3. Number of convictions per year
It would be helpful to have a breakdown of the disabilities if possible.
Disclosure with Exemptions
Part disclosure with Section 12, Section 40 and Section 44 exemptions.
Information Correct as at
31 December 2021
Date of Disclosure
31 December 2021
Related Documents/Links
N/A
FOI 16078 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 Question 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. Essex Police do not record conviction data on the Athena Custody system, 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:
Caveats:
The data is correct as at 31 December 2021.
To obtain the below data, we have used a Victim Vulnerability Marker for records where that marker was “Disability”. However, the Victim is under no obligation to supply this information and the type of disability is often not recorded.
| Total | 339 | 18 |
| Year | Total Offences | Total Charged |
| 2016 | 88 | 6 |
| 2017 | 67 | 4 |
| 2018 | 51 | 1 |
| 2019 | 44 | 4 |
| 2020 | 55 | 3 |
| 2021 to 19 December | 34 | 0 |
Essex Police will not provide any further breakdown or information as the exemptions under FOI Section 40(2) Personal Information and Section 44(1) information covered by Prohibitions on disclosure such as the Sexual Offences (amendment) act 1992 which provides anonymity to victims of sexual offences.