Arrests for Sexual Offences

I would like to use the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to find out the disposal figures for all sexual crime categories, as explained below.

1) For each of the five years – broken down by calendar years 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007 and 2006 – list how many people were arrested on suspicion of:

- Rape
- Indecent assault
- Sexual assault
- Child sex offences
- Indecent photos of children
- Total sexual offences
2) For each offence list how many people were:
- Charged
- Cautioned
- Released without charge

In accordance with section 1(1) (a) of the Act our response is provided below;

I can confirm that the Cheshire Constabulary holds the information you have requested however, from our preliminary assessment, we estimate that compliance with your request would exceed the appropriate costs limit under section 12 of the Freedom of information Act 2000. This is currently £450. The reason for this is that in order to supply the information relating to part 2 of your request we would have to manually examine each of the arrest records, subsequent crime files and prosecution data to extract the relevant data. As there are in excess of 2700 records it is estimated that it would take in excess of 450 hours to obtain the results.

Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires the Cheshire Constabulary, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you with a notice which a) states that fact, b) specifies the exemption in question and c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.

It is estimated that compliance would exceed the appropriate limit. The appropriate limit is defined in the Data Protection and Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004, which is covered by statutory Instrument Number 3244 of 2004. Furthermore, Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 allows a public authority to refuse to respond to a request for information where the cost of compliance would exceed the appropriate limit as defined by the above mentioned regulations.