Drugs arrests from 2018 to 2021

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.22.023268

I note you seek access to the following information:

I'm writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act (2000) in relation to previous request 01/FOI/22/022602, asking that you please disclose, from each of the drug swabbing operations listed in the response, the details of any and all people arrested as a result of these actions.

I'd like you to give me the number of people in each, the age, gender, and ethnicity of each please.

Decision

I have today decided to disclose the located information to you.

Please find below information pursuant to your request above.

However you will note that the attached disclosure does not include data in relation to age, gender and ethnicity, the reason for this is because this information was not provided to the unit at the time the information was recorded.

I have conducted extensive searches and contacted various business units to try and collate this data however I have been unsuccessful. I then went back to our analyst to see if it was possible to try an obtain the information from the system using the information on the attached data set, however I have been informed that this would not be possible within the 18hrs provided under the Act.

I have been advised that to try and obtain this information, firstly a search would need to be conducted by date (dates on the attached), another search could be made on the data returned to filter this information down by offence, ie possession with intent to supply, possession of drugs etc. Once this data had been collated each arrest (Custody record) returned would need to be read.

We would then need to ascertain if the arrest record was in relation to the particular operation which would have been recorded in a ‘free text field’, if this was not noted on the custody record by the arresting officer then we could cross reference this record with the CRIS report. Again this would need to be read to see if it was in relation to the specific operations and would be reliant on the imputing officer recording this, again in a free text field.

An initial search for just two of the dates mentioned on the attached was conducted which returned in excess of 90 incidents on those dates in relation to drug offences. If both the custody and CRIS record needed to be read, at an estimation of anything from 10mins to 20mins to read each record, depending on the complexity of the incident, would take in excess of the 18hrs provided under the Act.

Therefore although this response is technically a cost refusal, considering the length of time it has taken for me to respond to your request I have attached the data that I have been able to retrieve.