FOI 473/25 Stolen Mobile Phones

Enquiry Reference:473 -25                                                                                               

I write in connection with regards to your Freedom of Information request.  Below is your request and our response.

This is a request for information about the number of stolen mobile phones that have been recovered by police. I understand that it is impossible to reunite many with their owners because many devices aren’t registered stolen or the IMEI numbers are unknown by their owner.

1. How many stolen or suspected stolen mobile phones are currently held by the force having been recovered by officers?
2. How many stolen or suspected stolen phones have been recovered by the force in the past five years? If possible it would be helpful if this data is broken down by year.
3. Of these, how many have successfully been returned to their owners?

I understand that questions 2 and 3 will be harder to answer (I imagine the first one could be answered with a simple inventory check) so if they are impossible to provide a clear response to I will accept an answer to just question one.

The analyst has provided the number of theft offences where there the property common name contains either ‘Mobile phone’ or ‘Smartphone’. There is also a property role code to identify if the item had been stolen or recovered, they have done 2 separate counts.

Note that volume of mobile phones that have been recovered, also include ‘stolen’ in the property role code.

Please note although every effort is made to ensure that the data provided by Cleveland Police is accurate and complete, our systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not for the purposes of providing data to answer specific FOI enquiries. There is the option for the officer to record the phone as recovered or found but the officer might record it somewhere else on the crime report therefore the results may be subject to inaccuracies.

Care should be taken to understand our return when considering the interpretation or further use of the data.

We cannot extract how many have been returned to their owners as there isn’t a field to search for   this.

Having made enquiries within the Force above is all the information we hold.  Please note that all statistical data supplied in relation to Freedom of Information requests is a snapshot of data held at the time the request was received by the Freedom of Information office and is subject to constant change/updates.

The Cleveland Police response to your request is unique and it should be noted that Police Forces do not use generic systems or identical procedures to capture and record data therefore responses from Cleveland Police should not be used as a comparison with any other force response you receive.

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