FOI 29/25 Child Criminal Exploitation

Enquiry Reference:  29 -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.

 

Could I please have the above information for the following dates: between 1st January 2022 to 1st January 2025.

 

1. The number of children (17 and under) who were flagged as victims of Child Criminal Exploitation in relation to county lines drug dealing and separately, the number of these children who were recorded as being in care (looked-after child). If possible, with age, gender and ethnicity provided for each sets.
2. a) We do not record if the child was in Local authority care or the ethnicity. The below is the number of children aged 17 and under were flagged as victims of Child Criminal Exploitation.

2023 – 72

2024 – 111

 

The below is the age.

Year	Age	Volume
2023	13	1
	14	16
	15	22
	16	26
	17	20
2024	12	6
	13	7
	14	16
	15	26
	16	38
	17	27

 

2. The number of children (17 and under) who were charged with drug supply offences related to county lines drug dealing and separately, the number of these children who were recorded as being in care (looked-after child). If possible, with age, gender and ethnicity provided for both sets.
3. a) No information held.

 

3. Number of missing incidents of children (17 and under) who were missing from care with the following information provided:
4. a) For this request the analyst extracted the MFH data from the dashboard. This was filtered by age group of 17 and under and then by the ‘missing from care’ indicator.

The data is the volume of incidents as per the request, many of the incidents involve children who were missing repeatedly. There are also incidents which involve more than one missing child.

Volume is grouped by per calendar year.

 

Age.

	2022	2023	2024
10 or under	9	4	11
11 to 17	1695	1404	1197

 

Gender

	2022	2023	2024
Male	1118	971	711
Female	586	429	480
Not recorded		8	17

 

Ethnicity

	2022	2023	2024
A9. Any other Asian background	36	43	32
B1. Caribbean	8
B2. African	1	2
B9. Any other Black background	4	2
M1. White and Black Caribbean	1
M3. White and Asian	1
M9. Any other mixed background	82	25	28
O9. Any other ethnic group	14	4	4
W1. White British	1414	1186	1012
W2. White Irish			3
W4. English		1
W9. Any other white background	13	27	22
(blank)	130	118	107

 

- Location reported missing from (local or out of force area)

Location taken from LPA.

	2022	2023	2024
Unknown/out of force	64	30	6
Stockton	621	547	410
Middlesbrough	511	328	394
Hartlepool	200	162	226
Redcar & Cleveland	308	341	172

 

Whether the child had been assigned a child criminal exploitation/county lines flag.

1. a) Only 2 incidents had a CSE marked of interest code applied.

 

- If possible, the type of care setting child was missing from.

1. a) The below table is taken from the ‘misper missing from text’.

 

	2022	2023	2024
Care	1082	1064	858
Not Recorded	428	181	150
Home	166	146	182
School	17	4	10
Other	10	11	8
Hospital	1	2

 

Having made enquiries within the Force above is all the information we will disclose and for anything else we will 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 neither confirm nor deny that it holds 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 23(5) Information Supplied by, or concerning, certain Security Bodies.

Section 23 is a class based absolute exemption and there is no requirement to consider the public interest in this case.

 

Confirming or denying the existence of whether any other information is held would contravene the constrictions laid out within Section 23 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 in that this stipulates a generic bar on disclosure of any information applied by, or concerning, certain Security Bodies.  None of the above can be viewed as an inference that the information you seek does or does not exist.

 

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