Reported Rape (1458A/21)
Request
Can I ask for the last two years (2019 and 2020) how many reported rapes there have been? How many of those reported led to a conviction?
Can I ask for the total time which police interviewed the victims/alleged victims of the these crimes during this period and the total time which police interviewed suspects/perpetrators?
If the total time of interviews is not possible to obtain, can I ask for the length of ten police interviews of alleged rape victims’ interviews? Can I ask then for the length of ten police interviews of rape suspects?
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). For question 1, we don’t record conviction data, our systems only give us information up to the time when the person leaves custody.
For questions 2 and 3 – we don’t have any data about interview times, we would need to conduct a manual search of the relevant data in order to locate and retrieve this information, this search 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.