Arrests and charges for arson offences from 2022 to 2024

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.25.042760

I note you seek access to the following information:

Please provide the following:

The number of arson offences reported to the service in the past three calendar years (2022, 2023, 2024). Please note that I require data related to arson (damage or destruction of property with fire) only, and not criminal damage generally.

Please break the results down by the following:

Month and year of the report (e.g. January 2022, February 2022, etc.) Location (As specific as is reasonably possible) If the investigation led to an arrest (yes/no/ongoing) If a suspect was formally charged with the crime (yes/no/ongoing) If the crime caused injuries to a victim or victims (yes/no) The age and gender (if known) of the offender

How many suspects were repeat offenders? By 'repeat offender', I refer to having been arrested or suspected of arson within the last five years.

Clarification -
Please provide data on those arrested, including age, gender and repeat offence rate. I am happy to accept that it will not cover offences that did not include identification. However, if I could also get a general number of offences without any sort of breakdown, that would be appreciated

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)(3A)(a) – Personal Information

Reason for decision

Section 3 of the Data Protection Act 2018 confirms that information which relates to an identified or identifiable living individual is Personal Data.

In most cases, Personal Data is exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act,

You have asked the MPS to disclose the number of arson offences reported in the past 3 calendar years (2022 -2024) broken down by month and year, location, if a suspect was charged, if the offence led to an arrest, If the offence injuries to a victim or victims and the age and gender of the offender as well of those arrested if they have repeat offenders.

We have made the decision to disclose the information you are seeking as follows the number of arson offences broken down by month and location (down to ward level), the arson offences resulting in at least one injury, by year and location (down to ward level), as well as well as the number of individuals arrested by age and gender, and individuals charged by age and gender. However, due to low numbers of certain groups, we cannot offer a more detailed breakdown as you requested. Accordingly, some data has been separated and presented into distinct tables and is not linked to specific months or locations. The ages of those arrested and charged have been grouped into ten-year intervals and presented in separate tables. Disclosing the data in the requested format could potentially identify specific offenses and individuals associated with those locations and offences, which raising privacy concerns as any such disclosure could cause individuals involved to be identify including the victims of those offences.

This information is not suitable for public consumption. Should the MPS publish the requested information as specified within the scope of your request, it would be at such a level that would make the identification of individuals possible this would be in breach of the DPA 2018 and GDPR. To produce and publish this information would not be lawful, fair or in line with our processing commitments.

For the above reasons, the exemption provided by Section 40(2)(3) of the Act, has been applied to refuse full disclosure of the information breakdown you are seeking.

Section 40(2)&(3) - Personal Information - The Freedom of Information Act provides an exemption for Personal Data and this is known as the section 40 exemption.

Where the request is seeking access to third party personal data the section 40(2) exemption may be engaged.

The Section 40(2) Exemption is both absolute and class based. When this exemption is applied, it is accepted that harm would result from disclosure. There is accordingly no requirement to consider whether release of information is in the public interest or demonstrate what harm would result from disclosure.

In order to apply the Section 40(2) exemption, the disclosure of the requested information must satisfy either the first, second or third conditions as defined by subsections 3A, 3B and 4A of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (as amended by Section 58 of the Data Protection Act 2018).

There are six Data Protection principles that are set out in Article 5(1)(a) of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) that dictate when the processing of personal data is lawful. The first principle requires that any processing of personal data must be lawful, fair, and transparent. Under Article 6(1)(f) of the GDPR, 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.

In this instance I have decided that the disclosure of the Personal Data would be incompatible with the first Data Protection principle which states that the processing (in this case the disclosure) of the data must be both lawful and fair.

Disclosure

Please find below 2 spreadsheets titled Arson Offences and Arrests and Charges for information relevant to your request

IMPORTANT:
Please ensure that the note section within the spreadsheets is read in conjunction with the data provided in this report to ensure that it is interpreted correctly.