FOI 834-2025 / Aug 2025 / Paedophile hunters
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 834-2025
I write in connection with the request for information, which was received on 11th August 2025 from Guardian Gatekeepers as follows:
This is a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Please provide the information and data described below for the period 10 August 2020 to 10 August 2025 (inclusive).
Definitions for the purposes of this request:
“Paedophile-hunter(s)” or “paedophile hunting groups” means non-police civilian organisations, groups or individuals who pose online or in person to identify, investigate, or arrange the meeting of persons suspected of intending to commit sexual offences against children and who then report those persons to the police (sometimes publicised on social media). If your records use a different term (for example “online vigilante”, “citizen sting”, “community watch”), please include those in the search and state which search terms you used.
“NFA” means “no further action”.
“Release pending investigation” means a reported suspect was released pending further enquiries.
“Outcome” refers to the police/CPS/charging/final court outcome associated with the police investigation prompted by the report.
Please provide:
Q1. Annual counts (broken down by calendar year) of reports to your force by paedophile-hunter groups (or equivalent civilians) where the report alleged a sexual-related offence. For each year, include the total number of reported incidents.
Q2. For those reported incidents, provide the following aggregate breakdowns (tables) by year and ethnicity (as recorded in your records) of the alleged suspect(s):
Number of reports per ethnicity per year.
For each ethnicity × year cell, provide counts of outcome categories: NFA, released pending investigation, charged (CPS charged), convicted, acquitted / found not guilty, and other final outcomes. If multiple outcomes occurred (e.g. initially NFA then reopened), list the most recent final outcome and also provide a count of changes of outcome.
Q3. For each conviction counted in (2), please also provide the average custodial sentence length in months (mean and median), broken down by year and ethnicity. Where available, provide the individual sentence lengths (anonymised) so that averages can be independently calculated.
Q4. For the same set of reported incidents, provide counts by year for whether the initial contact involved a real child at the point of contact (Yes / No / Unknown). For those where “Yes”, provide the outcome categories as in (2) and sentencing length data as in (3) for convictions.
Q5. Provide counts by year of incidents where it was later found (after police investigation) that a real child was involved (i.e., child victim confirmed after investigation), and the outcomes (NFA, charged, convicted, acquitted, other). Provide sentencing length data as in (3) for convictions.
Q6. Provide counts and details of occasions where the paedophile-hunting team or individual who made the report was the subject of a police investigation as a result of their conduct (e.g., allegations of criminality, harassment, entrapment, misconduct). For these investigator-on-hunter cases, for each year provide:
Number of investigations opened into hunting teams/individuals.
Outcome of those investigations: NFA, charged, convicted, acquitted / found not guilty, internal discipline, or other. If prosecutions occurred, please provide offence codes, final court outcome, and sentencing length data as in (3) for convictions.
Q7. For all of the above items, where possible, provide the data as anonymised, machine-readable records (CSV or Excel) where each row corresponds to a single reported incident and contains the following columns (leave personal identifiers blank/redacted but keep categorical data):
Year (YYYY)
Reporting source type (e.g., named paedophile-hunter group; “unknown civilian group”; “member of public via social media”)
Suspect age group (e.g., <18, 18–24, 25–34, 35–44, 45+) as recorded
Suspect ethnicity (as recorded)
Whether initial contact involved an actual child at point of contact (Yes/No/Unknown)
Whether, after investigation, a child victim was confirmed (Yes/No/Unknown)
Initial police outcome (NFA / released pending investigation / charged / other)
Final outcome (NFA / charged / convicted / acquitted / other)
CPS decision (if applicable)
Whether the reporting hunting team/individual was investigated by police (Yes/No)
Outcome of any investigation into the hunting team/individual (NFA / charged / convicted / acquitted / disciplinary / other)
Offence codes and short description (as recorded)
Custodial sentence length in months (if convicted)
Any public-interest redactions applied (and the legal basis for withholding, if data is withheld)
Q8. If any part of this request is refused or withheld under an exemption, please: identify the specific exemption(s) you are relying on, state why the exemption applies in this case, and provide the public interest test balancing that led to the decision.
Q9. If you consider any part of this request ambiguous, please provide the records you do hold that are closest to the request and explain briefly how you interpreted the ambiguous terms. If searching for “paedophile hunters” requires particular search terms or manual review, please supply the search terms used and an estimate of records that might require manual handling (and confirm if you will charge fees for that part).
Q10. Please supply the summary tables requested in (1)–(6) as CSV or Excel and the anonymised incident rows as a separate CSV/Excel attachment.
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. There is no marker to identify where reports or information has been provided by paedophile hunters, paedophile hunter groups, or any similarly named individual or group, and in order to provide a response to your request it would be necessary to undertake an in-depth review of each and every case file associated to every relevant offence during the stated period. As you will appreciate, this would take an inordinate amount of time, and would exceed 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 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. However, due to the volume of records that would need to be examined, I am unable to suggest a way to revise your request into one that could be managed within the fees limit. I can advise that prosecution and conviction data including details of convictions, not guilty verdicts, or acquittals, falls within the remit of, and is held by, HM Courts & Tribunal Services (HMCTS). You may therefore wish to contact them in regard to these elements of the 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