Request
Since the blanket ban came into force on May 26 in 2016, how many people has your police force arrested on suspicion of possession with the intent to supply new psychoactive substances?
Please break the data down by financial years 2016/17 and 2017/18 and by age.
Please provide the youngest age of each person arrested, by year.
Please see a table below for how I would like the data presented.
Please note that I would like the data in a downloadable Excel file.
The number of people arrested on suspicion of possession with the intent to supply drugs classed as new psychoactive substances
Age of person arrested 2016/17 2017/18
Under 10
10 to 13
14 to 17
18 to 20
21 to 30
31 to 40
41 to 50
51 to 60
61 to 70
71 plus
Age unknown
Age of youngest person arrested
Response
Please find attached our response.
Please note that these data should be interpreted with caution. Comparing numbers of incidents/crimes can be misleading and does not necessarily indicate the likelihood of someone being a victim of crime. In addition, the number of incidents/crimes recorded in an area over a period of time can be influenced by a number of factors. Consequently statistics on incidents/crimes for one period may not necessarily be a good indicator of future incidents in that area.
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.