Sarah's Law

I am currently undertaking a dissertation for my law degree in the area of Sarah’s Law (CSOD) and under the Freedom of Information Act would like to request answers to the following questions for my research.

Yours faithfully and with thanks in anticipation of your assistance.

Have there been any reported vigilante type actions following a disclosure?

Have any offenders who were previously engaged in a rehabilitation/monitoring type scheme gone underground because of a disclosure?

How many applications are genuine as opposed to revenge type applications?

What is the average cost of disclosing?

How many disclosure applications have you received year on year and how many led to disclosures?

How many do you anticipate for the next 5 years?

How many abuse cases do you anticipate disclosures have saved you?

What is the cost of an average sex offence against a minor investigation?

In relation to the different category numbers of offenders? How many have breached their bail/probation conditions?

In budgetary terms does your force believe Sarah's Law is effective? Do you consider it to have had a positive or negative budgetary effect.

Since ‘Sarah’s Law’ was rolled out in your area how many offences against a minor have been reported and how many led to convictions? And in the 5 years before Sarah's Law?

What is the average sentence for a paedophile?

What are the age ranges for convicted paedophiles?

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

Questions 1, 2, 3 & 4 There is no information held.

Question 5: We have previously disclosed figures in April 2011, please see the below web link: Since that disclosure there have been a further 14.

Previous Disclosure 3267

Question 6: We do not hold that information.

Question 7: The question is subjective and requires an opinion not fact based answer which I cannot provide.

Question 8: We do not hold this information. The costs of individual investigations is not calculated.

Question 9: This sort of information is not readily accessible and would require a manual trawl of incidents / cases in order to answer this question which I would estimate exceeds the FOI cost limits. However you may find some, (if not all), information contained in the annual MAPPA reports. Please see the below web link: Cheshire Probation Mappa Cheshire 2011

Question 10: The introduction of CSOD has had an impact on resources in the amount of time etc. needed to undertake a request. I can not say whether the enquirers would have still contacted the police with their concerns whether or not CSODs was in place.

Question 11: Again this sort of information relating to convictions is not readily available. it would require the detail of each reported case to be manually cross referenced with conviction data held on the Police National Computer (PNC). The PNC cannot be searched for statistical data of this nature, each individual person record would need to be looked at. This again would exceed the FOI cost limits.

Question 12 & 13 Again this information is not held. As with question 11, above, the PNC would have to be searched once the relevant offences & offenders had been identified. This would require the Authority to create new information that it does not usually hold. We are not required to create new information in order to respond to an FOI request.