FOI 348-2025 / Mar 2025 / Public indecency
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 348-2025
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 21st March 2025 as follows:
I am requesting information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 regarding incidents of public indecency recorded by your force. Please provide the following details for all recorded incidents of public indecency from 1st January 2022 to the present date:
- A breakdown of the nature of each public indecency offense, including but not limited to:
- Public sexual acts (including specifics such as intercourse, oral, or anal sex)
- Indecent exposure/flashing
- Public masturbation
- Other forms of public indecency (please specify)
- The date and time of each recorded incident.
- The specific location of each incident (e.g., park, street name, shopping area, public transport).
- The outcome of each case, including:
- Arrests made
- Cautions issued
- Charges brought and case outcomes (conviction, dropped, ongoing investigation, etc.)
If any of this information is exempt from disclosure, please provide a partial response with the available details. If my request exceeds the cost limit, please let me know how it can be refined to remain within the limit.
On 24th March 2025 we contacted you for clarification as follows:
We are writing in connection with your request for information received on 21st March 2025. In order to be able to respond to your request we require further information from you. Please would you clarify:-
With regard to Q1 of your request, it would appear that you are requesting information which would fall under two offences of:
066/21 Committing or conspiring to commit an act outraging public decency and
088/09 Exposure
Please can you confirm whether you are asking for the number of those crimes, recorded during the stated period, for Q1?
On 24th March you provided the following clarification:
Yes this is correct - thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify.
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Please be advised that not all of the requested information is in a readily retrievable format. In order to determine the circumstances/nature and specific location of each incident it would be necessary to review each and every one of the 167 offences of Committing or conspiring to commit an act outraging public decency and 211 offences of ‘Exposure’, recorded during the stated period. Such searches would be above the amount to which we are legally required to respond ie, the work involved in locating, retrieving and recording the information requested for exceeds the cost threshold (£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. An estimate of the cost involved is set out below:
378 offences @ 5 minutes per offence = 1890 minutes / 60 = 32 hours
In accordance s12(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 suggesting ways to revise your request where possible; however, due to the volume of records which would need to be reviewed, I am unable to suggest a way to revise your request into one which could be dealt with within the fees limit for these elements of your request unless you were to reduce the time period to, say 2 years.
In the event that you were you withdraw those elements it may be possible to provide the following for the entire period requested:
- A breakdown of offences of 066/21 Committing or conspiring to commit an act outraging public decency and 088/09 Exposure, broken down by specified time period (eg year, month (please note that specific date is likely to attract and exemption under s40(2) Personal Information as it would be likely to identify and individual)).
- A breakdown of the above offences by policing area.
- The outcome of the above investigations.
- The number of arrests made in relation to the above investigations.
Please note that any information subsequently returned would be subject to the usual disclosure considerations.
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