Revenge Porn (1075A/22)
Request
I would like to request the following information held by West Midlands police on ‘revenge porn’ crimes:
- Please provide data on how many ‘revenge porn’ crimes that were recorded in the calendar years 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 (to July)
Note: by ‘revenge porn’, we mean sharing or threatening to share private sexual photographs or films without the consent of the person depicted and with intent to cause them distress, which is a criminal offence under section 33 of the 2015 Criminal Justice and Courts Act
2. Please supply data on how many of the ‘revenge porn’ crimes recorded by the police in the calendar years 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 (to July) resulted in the following outcomes:
outcome type 1 (charged/summonsed)
outcome type 14 (Evidential difficulties: suspect not identified; victim does not support further action)
outcome type 15 (Evidential difficulties: suspect identified; victim supports action)
outcome type 16 (Evidential difficulties: suspect identified; victim does not support further action)
3. For the period between June 2021 and July 2022, please provide data on how many recorded ‘revenge porn’ crimes specifically involved threats to share private sexual photographs or films as opposed to incidents in which these photographs or films had already been shared
Note: The 2021 Domestic Abuse Act expanded section 33 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act to include threats to share private sexual photographs or films without consent of the person depicted and with intent to cause them distress
4. For the period between June 2021 and July 2022, please provide data on how many of the recorded ‘revenge porn’ crimes specifically included threats to share private photographs or films resulted in outcome types 1, 14, 15 and 16
5. Please supply data on the sex, ethnicity and age groups of victims of ‘revenge porn’ crimes between Jan 2019 and July 2022. Please also supply this data specifically for those crimes involving ‘threats to share’ from June 2021 to July 2022.
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). In relation to question 3, we would need to conduct a manual review of all relevant MO Notes / Incident Summaries 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.