Women arrested 818/2024

FOI Reference: 818/2024

Request:

1. The number of women from Carmarthenshire/Dyfed Powys who were arrested in 2023-24
2. How many of those women arrested were charged
3. How many were subsequently sentenced to serve a prison sentence
4. The duration of those sentences
5. The current number of women on probation in Carmarthenshire/Dyfed Powys.

Clarification Q:

1. You have stated that you require data for 2023-2024, would this be calendar or financial years?
2. when you state charged, do you mean charged to court or found guilty at court?

Clarification A:

1. January 2023 - present day - so calendar years.
2. Charged to appear at court AND found guilty at court

Response:

Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 places two duties on public authorities. Unless exemptions apply, the first duty at Section 1(1) (a) is to confirm or deny whether the information specified in a request is held. The second duty at Section 1(1) (b) is to disclose information that has been confirmed as being held.

Where exemptions are relied upon Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires Dyfed Powys Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant 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.

I can confirm that Dyfed-Powys Police does hold the information you have requested. However, we are withholding the whole of the requested information since we consider that the Section 12(1) exemption the Cost of Compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit applies to it.

Section 12 (1) – The cost of compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit

Section 12(1) states: “…Section 1 (1) does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.”

The cost of providing you with the information requested in respect of your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the “appropriate level” as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004. It is estimated that it would exceed 18 hours (i.e. minimum of 29 hours) to comply with part of your request. The regulations can be located @ https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/3244

The Freedom of Information department has been advised that the information in respect of your request is not held in an easily retrievable format, due to a change of recording systems. In light of this and in order to accurately obtain the information relative to your request for part of the time frame stipulated (01/04/2023-12/05/2023) would involve Dyfed Powys Police manually reviewing each record to ascertain if the women were from Carmarthenshire.

It has been established that there are a total of 352 custody records that cover the period of 01/04/2023-12/05/2023.  It has also been established that it would take 5 minutes per record to review each record to obtain the information relevant to your request (as outlined above).  The process outlined results in the below time estimate.

352 records x 5 minutes = 29 hours

Time estimate to complete task = 29 hours

The relevant department has advised that the data prior to 01/04/2023 is not held in a retrievable format but that a response can be provided within the appropriate time limit, i.e. 18 hours, for data from 13/05/2023 for Question 1, however, to retrieve data for the remaining questions would still likely result in a time estimate due to each record having to be manually checked to obtain the requested data.

In accordance therefore with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for the Whole of this request under Section 17(5) A public authority which, in relation to any request for information, is relying on a claim that section 12 or section 14 applies must, within the time for complying with section 1(1), give the applicant a notice stating that fact.

You may wish to refine and resubmit your request so that it reduces the time shown above to fall within the 18 hours, should you require any further advice in relation to this matter please don’t hesitate to contact the Freedom of Information Unit. Please also be advised that should the request be refined, it does not remove the public authorities right to cite exemptions if relevant.

(This is a response under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and disclosed on 05/09/2024)