2022/25222 - Sexual Offences
REQUEST
I am researching sexual offences against individuals who are inpatients in psychiatric units. I would like to request the following datasets held by your constabulary:
- The number of sexual assault allegations made by persons detained in a psychiatric unit where the alleged perpetrator is a member of staff,
- How many allegations resulted in an investigation,
- How many allegations resulted in prosecution,
- How many allegations resulted in no further action.
Clarification
Please can you search between 1st May 2021 and 1st May 2022
RESPONSE
During this time frame, there were 629 offences which had the following offence titles:
- Sexual Assault Of A Female Child Under 13 (Soa 2003 S.7)
- Sexual Assault On A Male Child Under 13 (S.7 Soa 2003)
- Sexual Assault On A Male (S.3 Soa 2003)
- Sexual Assault On A Female (Soa 2003 S.3)
- Sexual Assault On A Female By Penetration (Soa 2003 S2)
- Sexual Assault Of A Female Child Under 13 By Penetration (Soa 2003 S.6)
- Sexual Assault Of A Male Child Under 13 By Penetration (S.6 Soa 2003)
- Sexual Assault On A Male By Penetration (S.2 Soa 2003)
To identify whether the offence took place in a psychiatric unit where the alleged perpetrator is a member of staff, a manual trawl would have to be completed.
Unfortunately, we cannot answer this request as it will exceed the 18-hour time limit to complete a request. In the time frame requested, there have been 629 records. In order to retrieve the data, each record would need to be reviewed. It would take approximately three minutes to review each individual record, which would equate to 31 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.
Although excess cost removes the forces obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill, I have supplied information, relative to your request, retrieved or available before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded. I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of your request.
A keyword search has been conducted on the crime summaries using the following terms:
- Mental Hospital
- Mental Unit
- Psychiatric Hospital
- Psychiatric Unit
A manual trawl was then completed to identify the relevant offences where the offender is a member of staff.
The result of this search is based on having these terms included within the crime summary, and that they’re spelt correctly.
Following this process, there was 1 relevant offence identified. An investigation took place for this offence. The outcome for this investigation was, ‘Police - named suspect, victim supports but evidential difficulties’.
Prosecution data can be obtained from the courts.