Sexual Offences – Educational Establishments (961A/20)
Request
- How many sexual offenses were recorded by your police department at ‘educational’ establishments, in the last three academic years (01 September to 31 July Inclusive)?
- For these alleged offenses, please could you let me know the ages of victims, in the last three academic years (01 September to 31 July Inclusive)?
- How many of the suspects of these alleged offenses were under 18, in the last three academic years (01 September to 31 July Inclusive)?
Response
I can confirm that relevant information is held by West Midlands Police (please see attached – 961A_20_attachment.pdf). However, with regard to question 2, ages have instead been provided in age groups as specific ages are exempt by virtue of Section 40(2) – Personal information.
This exemption and explanatory notes are shown here:
Section 40(2) allows for personal data to be withheld where release would breach the third party’s data protection rights. It would be unfair to release this information where any person could be identified from the data and in this case the right to privacy outweighs any public interest in release.
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.