2021-24597 - Pick-Pocketing

REQUEST

I would like to request under the Freedom of Information Act data held by your force concerning the number of offences pick-pocketing reported within your jurisdiction over the past five years.

I would also like to request the number of residential burglaries reported within your jurisdiction for the same period.

I would, if possible like to request the number of cases that have been resolved in each category such as cases which have led to an arrest, prosecution or where a case has been resolved by means of a police caution.

RESPONSE

There is no specified crime recording offence for pick pocketing, however, to answer this request it would require a manual trawl of all crimes recorded as ‘theft from the person’ which has a total of 1,335 occurrences.  Each occurrence would require viewing to see if pick pocketing has been captured within the MO summaries or the log enquiries.  It would take an estimated 5 minutes to view each record, which would equate to 111 Hours of research. Therefore, a Section 12 Excess Cost exemption has been applied.

Section 12 – Excess Cost

The exemption applicable to the information you have requested for this question can be found at Section 12(1) of the Act and this refusal notice is issued under Section 17.

Section 12(1) “does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.” 

In the case of a police force, the appropriate limit is set at £450, which is calculated at £25 per hour (i.e., 18 hours). Gwent Police would have to conduct a manual search to find and extract the information for this question. This would take more than 18 hours of staff time therefore we are unable to answer this question and the exemption is engaged.