FOI 991-2023 / Oct 2023 / Sexual offences
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 991-2023
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 26th October 2023 as follows:
As a freedom of information request, please provide data on the number of police officers and staff you have been criminally investigated for a sexual or VAWG offence. Specifically, for each year from 2018 onwards, please provide:
The number of police officers criminally investigated for a sexual offence, split by crime type and outcome.
The number of police officers criminally investigated for a VAWG offence, split by the crime type and outcome.
The number of police staff criminally investigated for a sexual offence, split by the crime type and outcome.
The number of police staff criminally investigated for a VAWG offence, split by the crime type and outcome.
Please provide such data electronically, ideally as a spreadsheet.
Please accept my sincere apologies for the delay in providing the response to your request and for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Please be advised that the requested information is not centrally recorded and is therefore not held in a readily retrievable format.
Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) crimes would include incidents related to domestic abuse including controlling or coercive behaviour, rape and other sexual offences, stalking, harassment and sexual exploitation.
In view of the extensive definition of what would constitute VAWG offences, the business area conducted a search of the Complaints and Conducts System for all conduct cases, recorded between 1st January 2018 and 26th October 2023, and filtered these to show only cases which were indicated to have a criminal element, with a result of 79 cases. In order to determine a response to this request, it would be necessary to review each case manually, first to determine relevance, and then to locate details of the offence(s) and the outcomes. The business area has estimated that this would take 15 minutes per case. An estimate of the cost involved for this work is set out below:
79 cases @ 15 minutes per case = 20 hours
20 hours @ £25 per hour = £500
In addition, a scoping exercise determined that cases recorded on the Complaint and Conduct System as ‘Miscellaneous’ (MI), are also likely to be relevant to the request. MI cases cannot be filtered to show a criminal element, and therefore these would require full manual review. The business area has advised that for the specified period, this would involve a large number of cases.
Therefore, the work involved in locating, retrieving, and recording the information requested exceeds the cost threshold of £450, which equates to 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 acts as a Refusal Notice for this request
In accordance with Section 16 of the Act, I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to refining your request. I can advise that it may be possible to provide some information for conduct cases that have been assigned a National Factor tag of ‘VAWG - police perpetrated’ or ‘VAWG - police victim’, which are designed to provide context to the allegation. However, it is important to note that these tags were only introduced to the Complaint and Conduct System in 2022, should you wish to revise and resubmit your request.
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