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FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 309-2023
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 21st March 2023 as follows:
Following recent news report on sexual violence against women I am writing to you to request further information related to these types of crimes specifically in Warwick and Leamington.
If you could respond to the below questions, it would be much appreciated:
Q1. How many sexual violence offences have been committed against women in Warwick and Leamington in the last 6 months?
Q2. How many non-contact sexual offences against women have been reported in the last 6 months?
Q3. How many sexual violence offences against women have been committed in Warwick and Leamington by retired or serving member of the police force in the last 6 months?
I would also be grateful if you could, in addition to answering the above questions, provide historical data for each point for the past 5 years.
Please accept my sincere apologies for the delay in providing the response to your request and for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Please be advised that some of the requested information is not centrally recorded and is therefore not held in a readily retrievable format. Regarding Q3, in order to accurately determine whether any of the suspects were retired members of Warwickshire Police, it would be necessary to manually research each and every suspect against the HR system. Furthermore, in order to capture any suspects that may have retired from the force prior to 2013, a manual search of paper records would also be required. As there is no specific crime or established definition for ‘Sexual Violence’, the business area has carried out a search for all ‘Rape’ and ‘Other Sexual Offences’, recorded between 1st January 2018 and 31st March 2023, where a female victim was indicated, and where the offence location was within the Warwick and Leamington district. This returned 1,449 offences. Assuming there is only one suspect per crime, at a conservative estimate of 5 minutes per suspect, this would equate to in excess of 120 hours of work, and would exceed the cost threshold of £450, or 18 hours work at a standard rate of £25 per hour, as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
In accordance with Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter is a Refusal Notice for this part of the request, and, if one part of a request exceeds the fees limit, then Section 12 of the Act applies to the whole request.
In accordance with Section 16 of the Act, I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to refining your request; however, due to the requirement to manually research each suspect, I am unable to suggest a way to revise this part of the request into one that could be managed within the fees limit.
As a gesture of goodwill, please see the responses to your remaining questions set out below. This information was obtained before it was realised that not all of the requested information could be retrieved in full within the fees limit, and this should not be taken as a precedent that additional information would be supplied outside of the time/fees legislation for any subsequent requests.
Q1 response: Please be advised that there is no specific crime or established definition for ‘Sexual Violence’, therefore searches were carried out for all ‘Rape’ and ‘Other Sexual Offences’, recorded between 1st October 2022 and 31st March 2023, where a female victim was indicated, and where the offence location was within the Warwick and Leamington district. This returned a result of 151 crimes for this 6-month period.
The same search was also carried out for the period 1st January 2018 to 31st December 2022, to provide historical data for the past 5 calendar years. This returned a result of 1,298 crimes, broken down as follows:
Year |
Total |
2018 |
248 |
2019 |
244 |
2020 |
251 |
2021 |
255 |
2022 |
300 |
Grand Total |
1298 |
Please note that gender is not a mandatory field within the crime recording system and so is not always captured. Please also note that the above figures include victims aged 17 and under.
Q2 response: Please be advised that ‘non-contact’ has been interpreted as relating to Voyeurism and Exposure offences, including attempted.
For the 6-month period 1st October 2022 to 31st March 2023 there were 13 such offences.
For the 5-year period 1st January 2018 to 31st December 2022 there were 87 offences.
Every effort has been made to ensure that the information provided is as accurate as possible.
Your attention is drawn to the below which details your right of complaint.
Should you have any further enquiries concerning this matter, please write or email the Freedom of Information Unit quoting the reference number above.
Yours sincerely
Freedom of Information Officer
Freedom of Information Unit
Warwickshire Police
PO Box 4
Leek Wootton
Warwickshire
CV35 7QB