Race Hate Crime (1320A/23)
Request
Please provide the data for the following financial years:
2018/19
2019/20
2020/21
2021/22
2022/23
How many race hate crimes were reported to your force?
How many charges were made by your force?
Breakdown of ethnic backgrounds of victims
How many race hate crimes against children (u18s) were reported to your force?
Breakdown of the type of offence – e.g. physical, verbal, online etc
Breakdown of the ages of the victims
Breakdown of ethnic backgrounds of victims
How many charges were made by your force?
Breakdown of the ages of the people charged.
Points for clarification and accuracy:
- Children refers to those under the age of 18 – if the child is under the age of 1 please provide age in months
- This is a request about racially aggravated hate crimes only – please ensure religiously aggravated offences are filtered out
- Please ensure data is provided in format of financial years (e.g. 2018/19) and not individual years (e.g. 2018)
Response
Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide this information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (see ‘Reason for Decision’ below).
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). 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
Please note that researching each individual case would exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12). Please note in order to check age data for accuracy would exceed the FOI time limit, however have done the lower age bracket has been checked in order to assist.
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.