FOI 812/24 Offences under Female Genital Mutilation Act
Dear Sir/Madm,
Enquiry Reference: 812 - 24
I write in connection with regards to your Freedom of Information request. Below is your request and our response.
I am writing to request data on recorded crimes, arrests and charges by your force for the following offences under the 2003 Female Genital Mutilation Act.
1. Assisting a non-UK person to mutilate the female genitalia of a British citizen overseas
2. Failing to protect a girl from the risk of FGM
3. Conducting FGM
4. Assisting a girl to conduct FGM on herself.
I am requesting data for the following years: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and the first six months of 2024 (1 Jan 2024 to 30 Jun 2024).
Please break the data in your response down by year and by each offence.
Answer
Having made enquiries within the Force the below is all the information we are able to disclose.
The below table contains the volume of crimes (008/52) per calendar year. There were no data/crimes before 2019.
|
|
2019 |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023 |
Grand Total |
|
008/52 - Excise, infibulate, aid, abet, counsel, mutilation of female genitalia |
1 |
1 |
6 |
5 |
1 |
14 |
Below is a breakdown of the crime outcomes each year. There are no role codes of arrested nor charged in this time.
|
|
2019 |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023 |
Grand Total |
|
14: Victim declines/unable to support action to identify offender |
1 |
1 |
|
|
|
2 |
|
15: Police - named suspect, victim supports but evidential difficulties |
|
|
5 |
|
|
5 |
|
18: Investigation complete no suspect identified |
|
|
|
1 |
1 |
2 |
|
20: Other body/agency has investigation primacy |
|
|
1 |
4 |
|
5 |
|
Grand Total |
1 |
1 |
6 |
5 |
1 |
14 |
For anything else we would rely on the following: -
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 requires that I provide the applicant with a notice which: a) states that fact b) specifies the exemption(s) in question and c) state (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.
Cleveland Police can confirm we hold the information relevant to your request as the duty in Section 1(1) (a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 does not apply, by virtue of the following exemptions:
Section 31(1)(a) & (b) Law Enforcement.
Section 40(2) Personal Information
Section 44 Information covered by prohibitions on disclosure.
Section 31 is prejudice based qualified exemptions and there is a requirement to articulate the harm that would be caused in confirming or not that the information is held as well as carrying out a public interest test.
Factors favouring Disclosure:
The Police Service is charged with enforcing the law, preventing and detecting crime and protecting the communities we serve and there is a public interest in the transparency of policing operations to ensure investigations, enquiries, etc. are dealt with appropriately.
Factors favouring non-Disclosure:
Releasing the information Cleveland Police holds could compromise law enforcement tactics which would lead to a hindrance on the Police Force’s ability to prevent and detect crimes. Vulnerable areas could be identified by disclosure leading to more criminal activity placing the public in harm’s way.
Section 40 is an absolute exemption, which means that the legislators have identified that harm would be caused by any release. In addition, there is no requirement to consider the public interest test.
By way of explanation to you I would point out the following: Under Section 40(2) of The Freedom of Information Act, information is exempt information if it constitutes personal information of which the applicant is not the data subject. In order to be considered exempt personal information, the information must satisfy one of two conditions. It must either be information which would be exempt from disclosure to the data subject under the provisions of the Data Protection Act 2018, or disclosure of the information would contravene any of the Data Protection Principles or cause damage or distress to the data subject.
On this occasion the information requested is clearly personal information and would contravene the first principle of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) - lawfulness, fairness and transparency, what are the likely expectations of the data subjects, in that would they expect the Cleveland Police to release the number offences carried out under Female Genital Mutilation Act to the world, since release of information under The Freedom of Information Act 2000, is release to the world at large and not just to the individual applicant and as such I believe to do so would amount to unfair processing and hence therefore is exempt.
Section 44 is a class based absolute exemption and there is no requirement to consider the public interest in this case.
Section 44(1)(a) prohibits information from disclosure under other legislation. Often referred to as statutory prohibitions or statutory bars, they prevent disclosure by public authorities if its disclosure would breach:
- primary legislation (an Act of Parliament); or
- secondary legislation (a Statutory Instrument)
Section 44(1)(b) prohibits disclosure of information if it is incompatible with or contradictory to any European Union legislation covering release of categories or types of information.
Section 44(1)(c) facilitates the withholding of any information that would, if released, lead to contempt of court.
In accordance with Section 17(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this notification acts as a Refusal Notice to this section of your request.
If you are not satisfied with this response or any actions taken in dealing with your request, you have the right to request an independent internal review of your case under our review procedure. The Freedom of Information Code of Practice (see below link) states that a request for internal review should be made within 20 working days of the date on this response or 40 working days if extenuating circumstances to account for the delay can be evidenced. Public authorities are not obliged to accept internal reviews after this date.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/freedom-of-information-code-of-practice
Yours sincerely
Information Rights Decision Maker