Youngest Arrest for Possession of Cocaine

1. How old was the youngest person to be arrested by Cheshire Police for possession of cocaine between 1st January and 31st December 2010? How old was the eldest?
2. How old was the youngest person to be charged by Cheshire Police for possession of cocaine between 1st January and 31st December 2010? How old was the eldest?

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

Today is the 20th working day for responses to your request. However we are currently experiencing some difficulties with it.

The data you have requested is contained within the custody system. The custody database itself cannot be searched for statistics. We us a bolt on piece of software called Business Objects for searching and extracting data from this database, (and others). Unfortunately a major fault developed with the software making it unusable to retrieve data from custody records. The technicians are currently working on the problem but we do not have any idea when it will be fixed

Therefore I have no alternative but to refuse your request. Our response in line with the Act is as follows:

From our 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 are explained above but to recap. The data you have requested is contained in the custody records database. Currently the data is not retrievable electronically due to a failure of software. The only method of retrieval is to manually examine each custody record to extract the data you require. This is estimated to take one staff member one month to achieve which would exceed the appropriate limit.

Your request is therefore refused.

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.

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.

You may wish to view previous responses to similar requests on our disclosure log which show the youngest and oldest persons arrested for various offences including possession of drugs, however they do not show what kind of drugs.

Previous Disclosure 2821

Previous Disclosure 2955