Cyberstalking incidents 554/2022

FOI Reference: 554/2022

Request:

1: The total number of cyberstalking incidents recorded per calendar year from 2017 to 2021. Please provide an annual breakdown. If you can get 2022 data, can we have a breakdown of the first 6 months? For clarification, if you can use the ‘online’ tag and these offences:

• Stalking
• Harassment
• Malicious communications
• Controlling and coercive behaviour

2: Where possible, provide detail on each recorded incident (e.g harassment, stalking, stalking involving serious alarm/distress).  For clarification, if you can give detail on offence type e.g. harassment. If you can get 2022 data, can we have a breakdown of the first 6 months? Please provide annual breakdown as per Q1

3: The number of cyberstalking incidents in which the perpetrator(s) is identified, per calendar year from 2017 to 2021.   If you can get 2022 data, can we have a breakdown of the first 6 months? Please provide annual breakdown as per Q1

4: The number of individuals that have reported cyberstalking offences to your police force, per calendar year from 2017 to 2021.   If you can get 2022 data, can we have a breakdown of the first 6 months? Please provide annual breakdown as per Q1

5: Please provide details relating to the outcome of the perpetrator referenced in Q3  (e.g charge, caution, fixed penalty, resolution). This information should be broken down per calendar year from 2017 to 2021 as per Q1. If you can get 2022 data, can we have a breakdown of the first 6 months?

6: Breakdown of towns and cities data for all questions. I know not all the police forces have cities so please breakdown into towns if this is the case.

7: Breakdown of age and gender for all questions.

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 2,083.17 hours) to comply with this part of your request. The regulations can be located @ www.legislation.hmso.gov.uk/si/si2004/20043244.htm

The Freedom of Information Department has been advised that the information in respect of question 2 of your request is not held in an easily retrievable format by the systems utilised by Dyfed Powys Police with information being recorded under the umbrella offence categories of Harassment, Stalking and Malicious Communications. Therefore, in order to establish the specific offence requested in question 2, would require each and every crime record of the above 3 umbrella offence categories listed to be reviewed over the time frame specified. It has been established that for the period as specified within the request (i.e. 2017 – 2022) there are a total 12,499 crime records that would require reviewing. It has been estimated that it would take a minimum of 10 minutes to research a single crime record for relevance to question 2 of your request as outlined above, resulting in the following broken down time estimate.

2017	=	805	crime records @ 10 mins per crime	=	134.17	hours
2018	=	1218	crime records @ 10 mins per crime	=	203.00	hours
2019	=	1969	crime records @ 10 mins per crime	=	328.17	hours
2020	=	2826	crime records @ 10 mins per crime	=	471.00	hours
2021	=	3816	crime records @ 10 mins per crime	=	636.00	hours
2022	=	1865	crime records @ 10 mins per crime	=	310.83	hours

Total of 2,083.17 hours to complete task

Please note: A response to questions 1, 2 (for Controlling and coercive behaviour only) 3, 4 and 5 can be provided within the 18 hour time  limit. However, an additional time estimate of approximately 16 hours would be applicable for question 6 of the request as there a 97 blank cells that would need to be reviewed to ascertain if an offence town was listed within the crime record.  Furthermore, an additional time estimate for question 7 would also be applicable as there are a number of blank cells which would need to be reviewed. This time estimate has not been calculated at this point as the request already exceeds the 18 hour time limit and it is not clear where the request is referring to victim or suspect only details or both.

In accordance 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 Force’s right to cite exemptions if relevant.

                                                                                                           

(This is a response under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and disclosed on 09/08/22)