FOI 164-2024 / Feb 2024 / Stalking & GPS

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: FOI-164-2024

I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 7^th February 2024 as follows:

1) Can you please provide me with the total number of coercive control cases AND stalking cases that your police force has dealt with in 2023? Please display the total case numbers for coercive control and stalking separately.

2) Can you also please provide me with the number of cases in 2023 that were dealt with by your police force where GPS tracking was used as a form of coercive control? This could include social media trackers, technology-based trackers, AirTags, trackers on apps etc.

3) Can you also please provide me with the number of cases in 2023 that were dealt with by your police force where GPS tracking was used as a form of stalking? This could include social media trackers, AirTags, technology-based trackers, trackers on apps etc.

Q1 response: Searches were conducted for all offences, recorded in the period 01/01/2023 and 31/12/2023, under Home Office Code ‘8Q - Stalking’ or ‘8U – Controlling or coercive behaviour’ as the primary offence classification.

Q2 & Q3 response: Please be advised that the requested is not centrally recorded and is therefore not held in a readily retrievable format.  There is no specific identifier for ‘airtag’, and no flag or marker to easily identify when this has occurred in relation to an offence.  Keyword searches are not carried out routinely as they are not reliable, they will only bring back records where the chosen keyword(s) is present within the MO Description / Incident Summary of an investigation, these are limited free text fields and do not contain all information in relation to an investigation.  In order to provide an accurate response to your request it would be necessary to review the wider investigation papers in relation to each and every one of the 1282 offences included in the response to Q1.  Even at a very conversative 2 minutes per record, this would equate to in excess of 42 hours of work and; therefore, would exceed the amount to which we are legally required to respond, i.e., the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.  For Police forces in the UK, the "appropriate limit" is up to 18 hours of work on one request.

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; however, due to the volume of records which would need to be individually reviewed, I am unable to suggest a way to reduce your request into one which could be managed within the fees limit.  However, although the limitations of a keyword search have been set out above, should you wish to resubmit a request asking for specific terms to be searched within the MO Description / Incident Summary fields, then this could be undertaken; however, it must be understood that this would not necessarily provide an accurate response.

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.

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Yours sincerely

Freedom of Information Officer
Warwickshire Police

Freedom of Information Unit

PO Box 4

Leek Wootton

Warwickshire

CV35 7QB

[email protected]