FOI 18/25 PND Custody Photos
Enquiry Reference: FOI 18-25
I write in connection with regards to your Freedom of Information request. Please accept my apologies for the late response. Below is your request and our response.
With reference to any custody images of people who have not been charged or convicted that are currently being stored in your locally held database, please could you give me a breakdown by religion and ethnicity?
If the data is held, please could you give me two separate breakdowns (a column for religion and a column for ethnicity)? If information on religion is not recorded, please could you just give me a breakdown by ethnicity?
Please could you also include a brief note to indicate how long each person's image has been on the database? Additionally, if it is within the time and cost limit, please could you also include a note about whether each one has been cleared or if they are still awaiting trial?
Ideally I'd like to get information about all images currently stored on your database at the moment, but if a timeframe is required, please could you provide information for images captured from 1 January 2020 to the date of this request?
Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) 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 Sec 1(1) (b) is to disclose information that has been confirmed as being held. Where exemptions are relied upon s17 of FOIA requires that we provide the applicant with a notice which: a) states that fact b) specifies the exemption(s) in question and c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.
Having made enquiries within the Force, a search of the custody system for offences where there is no prosecutions brought back thousands of entries and to ascertain if the information you require, if held, it would be necessary to manual review all custody records and this would take far in excess of the appropriate time stipulated by the Secretary for Constitutional Affairs, Lord Falconer on the 18th Of October 2004, that is, eighteen hours. This falls under the exemption of 'Compliance exceeding the appropriate limit' covered by Section 12 (1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and as such this work could not be undertaken.
Therefore, please treat this as a refusal notice under S17 of the Freedom of information Act.
In accordance with Section 16 of the Act we have a duty to provide advice and assistance however on this occasion we cannot offer any suggestion on how you could refine this request.
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