Arrest Charges for Drugs

Please provide me with a breakdown of the numbers of arrests and charges for crimes related to drugs for ages under 20 in your area.

i.e. -

(1) The number of people arrested for drugs crimes in each of the age brackets: <10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19

(2) The number of people charged for drugs crimes in each of the age brackets: <10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19

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

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 basis for this calculation is the cost of retrieving the information to answer your question 2. The information is held within individual crime files which would have to be manually searched to obtain and extract the data. As there are 671 files it would take about 55 hours for one person to extract the information. This would exceed the appropriate limit and your request is 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.

In order to assist you we can supply the information to answer your question 1 which is shown below. I am unable to offer you a realistic alternative for your

question 2.

Data relates to the number of persons whose primary reason for arrest was for a drugs offence.

Please note the following:

Police forces in the United Kingdom are routinely required to provide crime statistics to government bodies and the recording criteria is set nationally. However, the systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the crime data. It should be noted that for these reasons this force's response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other response you may receive.