Upskirting Offences (307A/21)
Request
I would like to submit an FOI request on upskirting, which was made a specific offence under the Voyeurism Act and came into force on April 12 2019.
- In the year January 1 2020 to December 31 2020 (or the nearest date to this point for which data is available), please could you tell me the number of allegations of upskirting reported to police?
- Where possible, please break down the date of when the incident was alleged (month is fine).
- Where possible, please state the details of allegation (basic details such as what is alleged to have happened, the age and sex of the alleged victim, where known).
- Where possible, please state whether the allegation ever formed some part of a criminal charge (and, where possible, details of any prosecution).
Response
We can confirm that some relevant information is held by West Midlands Police. However, although the majority of this information is attached (307A_21_attachment.pdf), due to the small number of cases and the risk of individuals being identified as a result, we are withholding details of the allegations and the age of the victims by virtue of the following exemption: Section 40(2) – Personal information
Section 40(2) allows for personal data to be withheld where release would breach the third party’s data protection rights. It would be unfair to release this information where any person could be identified from the data and in this case the right to privacy outweighs any public interest in release.
Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.
If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.