Dating Apps (1117A/21)
Request
Subject: Dating Apps
- How many offences has your force recorded where the key term “Tinder” has been used? (i.e. where the term Tinder has been mentioned in the MO field of a crime report)? In 2017? 2018? 2019? 2020? 2021?
- How many offences has your force recorded where the key term “Bumble” has been used? (i.e. where the term Bumble has been mentioned in the MO field of a crime report)? In 2017? 2018? 2019? 2020? 2021?
- How many offences has your force recorded where the key term “Happn” has been used? (i.e. where the term Happn has been mentioned in the MO field of a crime report)? In 2017? 2018? 2019? 2020? 2021?
- How many offences has your force recorded where the key term “Hinge” has been used? (i.e. where the term Hinge has been mentioned in the MO field of a crime report)? In 2017? 2018? 2019? 2020? 2021? Please carry out the search using both “Hinge” and “App” to negate any false results.
- How many offences has your force recorded where the key term “dating app” has been used? (i.e. where the term dating app has been mentioned in the MO field of a crime report)? In 2017? 2018? 2019? 2020? 2021?
- How many offences has your force recorded where the key term “online dating” has been used? (i.e. where the term online dating has been mentioned in the MO field of a crime report)? In 2017? 2018? 2019? 2020? 2021?
When providing the data, please can you specify the nature of the crime (e.g. sexual assault) and whether it resulted in a charge (y/n) and whether it resulted in a conviction (y/n). Please treat each year as a calendar year from Jan-Dec, apart from 2021, could you include data for January to June.
Could you also supply for each offence:
– The sex of the alleged victim
– The age of the alleged victim (This can be divided into age ranges if easier).
– Whether or not the accused had a previous conviction
Response
Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide all of this information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (see ‘Reason for Decision’ below).
However, although excess cost removes the force’s obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill I have supplied information, relative to your request, retrieved before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded (see attached file 1117A_21.xlsx). Please also note – court data are not fed back into our crime recording systems and therefore we are unable to provide conviction data in relation to charges. I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of the request.
REASON FOR DECISION
We do not have a marker on our crime recording system that allows us to easily determine whether or not an alleged offender had a previous conviction. Therefore in order to determine this information, we would need to manually examine every case. Such a however would exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12).
This means that the cost of compliance with the whole of your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond, i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information would exceed the appropriate costs limit under section 12(1) of the FOI Act 2000. For West Midlands Police, the appropriate limit is set at £450, as prescribed by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004, S.I. 3244.
Further information on section 12 of FOI is available here: