Intra and inter ethnic crime from 2019 to 2023

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.24.036610

I note you seek access to the following information:

1. Intra and inter ethnic crime (where there is a victim and suspect linked together i.e White Victim and Asian suspect, see 01/FOI/22/024193) from 2019 to 2023 in total
2. Intra and inter ethnic crime from 2019 to 2023 for the specific crime types of
   Rape
   Other sexual
   Assault with injury
   Common assault
   Murder (homicide)
   Other violence
   Wounding/GBH
   Robbery: Personal property
   Theft from person

Decision

I have today decided to disclose some of the requested information. Some data has been withheld as it is exempt from disclosure and therefore this response serves as a Refusal Notice under Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act) by virtue of the following exemptions:

Section 40(2)(3)&(4) – Personal Information

Reason for decision

There are six data protection principles that are set out in Section 34 of the Data
Protection Act 2018. The first principle requires that the disclosure of the requested personal data must be lawful and fair. Under the Act, the disclosure of personal data is considered to be lawful if:

a. There is a legitimate interest in the disclosure of that personal data.
b. The disclosure of the personal data is necessary to meet that legitimate interest.
c. The disclosure would not cause unwarranted harm to the data subject.

Under Section 40(2) and (3) of the Act, Public Authorities are able to withhold information where its release would identify any living individual and breach the principles of the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA). I have applied this exemption in that the identity of individuals that may be realised through providing the information broken down in the format you have requested would constitute personal data which, if released, would be in breach of the rights provided by the DPA.

The six principles of the DPA govern the way in which data controllers must manage personal data. Under principle one of the DPA, personal data must be processed fairly and lawfully. I consider that providing information that has the possibility of identifying individuals constitutes personal data. The release of this information would be unfair as the persons concerned would have no reasonable expectation that the MPS would make this information publicly available.

The requested information, if disclosed in full, could lead to the identification of specific individuals linked to sexual offences.

Having reviewed the data, I have found that after having considered the legitimate interest test, that any further break down would not be in accordance with the first principle. Although I understand there is an interest in the information you seek, I believe this interest has been satisfied by the release of the disclosed information and aggregated data for low totals. I do not believe that providing any more details, when there is a reasonable risk that the additional information would identify individuals involved would add to any wider public debate that may be ongoing.

Furthermore I do not think it would be fair to the victims of sexual offences if information was disclosed that identified them in a Freedom of Information response.

Criminal Offence and Special Category data

The UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018 recognise that criminal offence and special category data need more protection due to its sensitivity and potential to adversely affect the rights and freedoms of individuals which would have a high impact upon data subjects.

Your request relates to special category data. It relates to crimes of a sensitive nature, that is, sexual offences (i.e. special category data) in addition to being criminal offence data.

The MPS has to take additional care in relation to the personal data of individuals who may have a strong expectation that related information would be held in confidence in addition to those who are entitled to anonymity.

Victims of sexual offences - Section 1(2) of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 Act states that when someone is accused of a sexual offence, nothing can be reported that may lead to the identification of the victim.

In reaching my decision, I have, in each case, given due regard to the condition at Article 6(1)(a) and 6(1)(e) of the GDPR. Condition one of the GDPR requires that consideration is given to whether consent for disclosure has been given whilst Condition six requires that consideration is given to performance of a public task in the public interest.

Having considered both conditions, I have established that no consent is present or would likely be received to release this information. The provision to refuse access to information under Section 40(2)(a)(b) and (3A)(a) of the Act is both absolute and class based. When this exemption is claimed, it is accepted that harm would result from disclosure. There is accordingly no requirement to demonstrate what that harm may be in refusing access to information.

However, some data relating to sexual offences has been aggregated. Disclosure in the format you requested, in some instances risks the identification of individuals due to the low totals returned.

Disclosure

Please find below information pursuant to your request above.

Kindly ensure that the attached data is read in conjunction with the notes page of the spreadsheet. The data provided is likely to be inaccurate for the following reasons which are included on the notes page:

The Police Defined Ethnic Identity category was used rather than the Self defined Ethnic Identity category. This is because the Self defined Ethnic Identity category is a self reporting category. This means that not all victims or accused choose to give information regarding their self defined ethnic identity, leaving the field blank.

This is not a reflection of ALL crime data as some is "state" victim rather than person victim

Totals for more recent years will be lower as they are more likely to still be being investigated and therefore many not have Accused screens created yet.

The data shows the total number of offences with victims of each ethnicity group and then of those, the ethnic breakdown of the accused. The total number of offences for each ethnic grouping by Accused will add up to slightly more than the total for the total number of offences according to victim ethnicity as it is possible that some cases have more than one Accused who have different ethnicities. For the same reason, the victim by ethnicity data for each year cannot be added to get a total for that year as some crimes will feature in more than one data set if there were multiple victims with different ethnicities.

Some of the requested offences are subsets of others; figures from different tables should not be combined.

In light of the above, the data disclosed from this FOI requests is not an accurate reflection of the ethnicity of the victims of these offences.