Domestic Abuse (414A/21)
Request
I would like information on the following, from January 1, 2019, to December 31, 2019, and then the same information for the same calendar year of 2020.
1) How many reports of domestic abuse, both resulting in injury and not resulting in injury, have you received? Please could this be broken down month-by-month, as well as a total for both years?
2) How many domestic abuse-related arrests have been made?
3) How many people have been charged with a domestic abuse-related offence?
4) How many people have been convicted of a domestic abuse-related offence?
If possible, please could all the above information also be broken down into gender – for example, the number of reports made by women, men or children, the number of arrests made by women, men or children etc.
Answers to questions 2, 3 and 4 do not need to be broken down month-by-month, just a figure for each year, please.
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). We are unable to provide data on the gender of individuals who have reported a crime, or the gender of officers who have made an arrest. The data provided is broken down by the gender of the victim and offender involved in each report.
Also in relation to question 4 we do not hold conviction data but have provided crimes by outcome. To locate and retrieve all of this information we would need to conduct and manual search of all relevant records which would exceed the FOI time limit.
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.
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 confirming or denying that the information is held would exceed the appropriate costs limit under section 12(2) 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.