2022/24973 - Domestic homicide offences
REQUEST
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000/Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, I am writing to request anonymous information about domestic homicide offences (incorporating murder and manslaughter) recorded between 1st January 2015 and 31st December 2020 where the suspect/offender has claimed either:
- the killing was a mercy killing (i.e. that they were assisting the victim to die, that they killed them in an act of compassion);
- the killing occurred as part of a suicide-pact.
Domestic homicide is defined to reflect the statutory definition of domestic abuse as any killing perpetrated by an individual aged 16 or over where the victim is an intimate partner OR family member.
RESPONSE
We can only provide this information from 2017 onwards. There is no filter for killings that occurred as part of a suicide-pact, however there were 4515 incidents from 2017 until the end of 2020, which had a closing class of ‘sudden death/suicide’. A manual trawl through these incidents would need to be completed to identify which if these sudden deaths or suicides were part of a suicide pact. It would take 5 minutes to look through each record. As there are 4515 records, this would take over 376 hours to complete (4515 records x 5 minutes per record / 60). This is over the 18 hour limit and would therefore be exempt on time.
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.
We can only provide information from 2017 onwards. There was 1 homicide offence from 2017 – 2020 which is relevant to the criteria above. However, as there is only 1 offence, more detailed information cannot be provided as it would help identify the persons involved. Therefore, the following exemption has been applied.
Section 40(2) Personal Information
The exemption applicable to the information you have requested for this question can be found at Section 40(2) Personal Information, of the Act and this refusal notice is issued under Section 17.
Gwent Police is withholding the information you have requested on the basis that the exemption contained in s 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act applies in that the information you have requested is personal data of third parties and the disclosure of the data would breach one of the principles contained in the Data Protection Act. The relevant principle is the first principle which states that:
Personal data shall be processed fairly and lawfully and in particular shall not be processed unless -
(a) at least one of the conditions in Schedule 2 is met and
(b) in the case of sensitive personal data, at least one of the conditions in Schedule 3 is met
It is only necessary to consider (a) in respect of the information requested. The relevant condition in Schedule 2 is condition 6 which states that:
"The processing is necessary for the purposes of legitimate interests pursued by the data controller or by the third party or parties to whom the data are disclosed, except where the processing is unwarranted in any particular case by reason of prejudice to the rights and freedoms or legitimate interests of the data subject"