Murders (824A/22)
Request
1) The number of murders recorded for each of the following calendar years:
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022 up until 31 May 2022 included
2) For each murder please could you provide the following details:
a) The recorded date of the offence (month and year)
b) Whether the murder is ‘solved’ or ‘unsolved’
c) The ‘officer observed ethnicity’ of the victim
3) For the murders which remain unsolved please provide the name of the victim.
Response
Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide this information within the appropriate (cost) limit under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act. This is because the ethnicity is not centrally recorded on our Holmes database, therefore we would have to manually review the files for each individual case to identify this. Such a search, however, would exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12).
This means that the cost of providing you with the information is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for this part of the request and if one part of a request exceeds the fees limit then S12 of the Act applies to the whole request.
However, under Section 16 of the Act I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to your request and can provide information for the remainder of your request as this was retrieved during our initial research. Please be advised however that while the majority of the information is attached to this email, I am not required to release all of the information requested. Please find attached our response.
REASONS FOR DECISION
The withheld information is exempt by virtue of the following exemptions:
Section 30(1)(a)(b) – Investigations and proceedings
Section 38(1)(a)(b) – Health and safety
Section 40(2) – Personal information
These exemptions and explanatory notes are shown here:
In line with Sections 30 and 38 above, I am required to complete a Prejudice Test/Public Interest Test (PIT) on disclosure. Please find this PIT attached (824A_PIT).
Should information relevant to this request exist it would pertain to the personal data of any individual involved in matters leading up to and surrounding the deceased’s death and/or any other individuals connected/related to the deceased. Therefore, it is exempt from disclosure and the exemption that applies to this type of information is Section 40 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Section 40(2) is an absolute and class-based exemption if to release the information exists would breach the third party’s data protection rights. In this case, to release this personal information would not constitute fair processing of the data. As this exemption is class-based I am not required to identify the harm in disclosure and in this instance I believe that the right to privacy outweighs any public interest in release.
This should not be taken as a precedent that additional information would be supplied outside of the time/fees legislation for any subsequent requests.
Further information on section 12 of FOI is available here: