Police Information Notices (PINs)

Freedom of Information Act request - Police Information Notices We write in respect of the above matter and ask that you provide us with information regarding the use by your force of Police Information Notices (‘PINs’, also referred to as ‘harassment warnings’) in connection with suspected harassment offences.

As you will be aware, offences of harassment are governed by the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. However this legislation does not provide any formal statutory framework for the issuance of police information notices. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) have published guidance on the use of PINs.

We ask that you provide us with the following documents and information:

1. Any specific policy guidance, or written descriptions of good practice, used by your own force on the issuance of PINs (whether published or not);
2. Confirmation of whether  your force’s practice in issuing such notices is intended to comply with the CPS and NPIA published guidance or merely take account of it;
3. Details of your force’s local procedure (if such a procedure exists) for ensuring that the views of the potential recipients are taken into account before PINs are issued to them;
4. Details of the methods of issuing PINs that are permitted by your force, for example, in person, by post, left at an address;
5. Statistics for of how many PINs were issued by your force in each of the previous two years (if these are kept);
6. Any statistics indicating how PIN’s have since been withdrawn over the last two years;
7. Details of your force’s local procedure (if such a procedure exists) which enables a PIN to be amended in the event that there exists a dispute of evidence and details of how many PINs have been amended using this procedure over the last two years; and
8. Details of the procedure (if any) by which your force invites representations from the recipient of a PIN before the PIN or the fact of its issuance is disclosed it to a third party, such as the Criminal Records Bureau.

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

Question 1.
Current policy is available on our web site. Please see the below web link:
Policies and Procedures

Question 2.
The current policy is in the process of being updated to include CPS and NPIA guidance

Question 3.
No. However, they are given the opportunity to explain their actions at the time of the PINs being issued to them.

Question 4.
Issued in person

Question 5.
Between January 2009 & January 2011 PINs issued by the force were a total of: 1330.

Question 6.
None

Question 7.
This information is not held as statistical data. If it is held it would be only in each individual case file. To determine if that is the case would require one staff member to examine each file, approx. 110 hours of work. this 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.

Question 8.
None currently. This will however be included in the updated policy as mentioned in 2, above.