1) How many times has your force been called to a report of an
alleged crime at a state primary school in each of the past five
recorded years?
2) How many times has your force been called to a report of an
alleged crime at a private or independent primary school in each of
the past five recorded years?
3) How many times has your force been called to a report of an
alleged crime at a state secondary school in each of the past five
recorded years?
4) How many times has your force been called to a report of an
alleged crime at a private or independent secondary school in each
of the past five recorded years?
In relation to primary schools (questions 1 & 2) please
provided figures for each of the past five recorded years for:
:: The number of children accused of committing a crime who were
below the age of criminal responsibility, meaning you were unable
to press charges
:: The number of children above the age of criminal
responsibility accused of committing a crime
:: The number of boys accused of committing a crime and also the
number of girls.
:: The number of incidents in which a parent was accused of
committing a crime
:: The number of incidents in which a teacher was accused of
committing a crime
:: The number of each type of incident (eg: vandalism, assault,
theft, bullying, racism, abusive behaviour, serious or sexual
crime)
In relation to secondary schools (questions 3 & 4) please
provide figures for each of the past five recorded years for:
:: The number of secondary school incidents where 11 to
14-year-olds were accused of committing a crime (please split
figures for boys and girls)
:: The number of secondary school incidents where 15 and
16-year-olds were accused of committing a crime (please split
figures for boys and girls)
:: The number of secondary school incidents where 17 and
18-year-olds were accused of committing a crime (please split
figure for boys and girls)
:: The number of secondary school incidents where a parent was
accused of committing a crime
:: The number of secondary school incidents where a teacher was
accused of committing a crime
:: The number of each type of incident (eg: vandalism, assault,
theft, bullying, racism, abusive behaviour, serious or sexual
crime)
5) How many primary school call-outs resulted in a pupil /
pupils being arrested?
6) How many primary school call-outs resulted in a pupil /
pupils being charged?
8) How many primary school call-outs resulted in a pupil /
pupils being convicted?
9) How many secondary school call-outs resulted in a pupil /
pupils being arrested?
10) How many secondary school call-outs resulted in a pupil /
pupils being charged?
11) How many secondary school call-outs resulted in a pupil /
pupils being convicted?
12) How many of the total call-outs involved a teacher being
arrested?
13) How many of the total call-outs involved a teacher being
charged?
14) How many of the total call-outs involved a teacher being
convicted?
16) How many of the total call-outs involved a parent being
arrested?
17) How many of the total call-outs involved a parent being
charged?
18) How many of the total call-outs involved a parents being
convicted?
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
locating and retrieving the information requested.
There are three main areas of search, the incident reports, the
custody records, the crime reports and the prosecution files. With
regards to the incidents, we attend approximately 2500 incidents at
school premises each year. In order to provide information to
answer your questions it would require a manual search of the above
records, some 60.000 crime reports for each year in addition to the
custody and prosecution files. This would clearly exceed the 18
hour limit for FOI requests by some considerable amount, probably
running into a months work for one person. 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 care to view the disclosure log contained within the FOI
publication scheme on our web site where you will find a
considerable amount of information relating to crime statistics, in
particular I draw your attention to two previous disclosures
relating specifically to schools.
Violent incidents at schools 2007 - 2010
Previous Disclosure 3054
All school crime 2009 to 2011
Previous Disclosure 2967
I would add that the recorded information does not categorise
the schools in any way, therefore information regarding primary,
secondary, private or state schools is not held. In addition
information on conviction data is held only on the Police National
Computer (PNC). The PNC is not searchable for statistical
information. A search of the PNC is in itself likely to exceed the
FOI cost limits in locating and extracting individual conviction
data.