Vagrancy Act (1569A/22)
Request
Under the Freedom of Information Act can I ask for the following information from your authority on homelessness convictions and arrests amongst under 18s.
I would like to request the information in questions 1-3 for the annual data for 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 (if possible).
Within your local authority, how many under 18s:
- Were moved on from an area under the Vagrancy Act
- Were convicted under the Vagrancy Act
- Were arrested under the Vagrancy Act
Clarification received 06/12/2022:
In relation to the Vagrancy Act, the special offences I am requesting information for from 2017-2022 annual data for under 18s is Vagrancy Act 1824 Arrests and Convictions, with the criminal offences being:
- beg in a public place
- persistently beg in public place
- vagrant being found in or upon enclosed premises
Response
Please find attached our response in relation to arrests and arrest outcomes. In relation to convictions, please note that the force is unable to provide this because prosecution data is not routinely fed back into our systems, and we do not have access to magistrates’ court data.
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.