FOI Asylum Seeker Offences (1300-2023/24)

Request

Q1. What is the number of offences committed by asylum seekers/refugees in the last 12 months from today's date 5th April 2024.

Q2. what is the breakdown of these offences committed by asylum seekers/refugees by the grouping of type of offence over this 12 month period from today's date 5th April 2024.

You will find other forces hold this information for public access. 

Could you please reply both electronically by email and by paper format through the postal system  

Updated FOI request received 08032024
Q1. When the Home Office house asylum/refugee in a hotel within your forces area, the Police/Fire Brigade/local NHS all 3 services pay a visit to each hotel being used by the Home Office, where they are offered a priority service to them should they need to contact you, this is regarding your Police force only.
Q2. If your force has arranged a priority service to each hotel, can you confirm that your force is fully aware of the location of every hotel used within your forces area.
Q3. If your force is fully aware that these hotels are solely for the accommodation of refugees/asylum seekers can you confirm.
If your forces computer records are checked to enable you to :
a.  Be aware of the number of times these hotels have been attended by your force, so you will have records that are easily checked for the type of offences you attended for, so you will know what offensives asylum seekers/refugees have been involved in.

Original FOI request received 08032024
1/ can you confirm that when an asylum/refugee opens within your forces area the Police/Fire Brigade/local NHS all 3 services pay a visit to each hotel being used by the Home Office, where they are offered a priority service to them should they need to contact you.
2/ as your force has arranged a priority service to each hotel, can you confirm that your force is fully aware of the location of every hotel within your forces area.
3/ as your force is fully aware that these hotels are solely for the accommodation of refugees/asylum seekers can you confirm when your forces computer records are checked you will be aware of the number of times these hotels have been attended by your force, you will have records that are easily checked for the type of offences you attended for, so you will know what offensives asylum seekers/refugees have been involved in.

Response

Extent of Searches to Locate Information

Following receipt of your request searches were conducted within North Yorkshire Police to locate relevant information. 

Decision

I am not obliged to provide you with a response to your request pursuant to Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act). Please note that when one part of your request falls under Section 12, we are not obliged to review the rest of the questions and the whole request is therefore exempt.

Section 12(1) applies to your request as the cost of complying with your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of identifying and retrieving any relevant information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.

Due to the nature of our recording systems the information requested, if held, is not in an easily retrievable format. Our information retrieval process generally relies on a computer ran report which captures any information recorded upon the surface of a record or within specified fields. Where relevant information is held deeper in the record, or outside of a specified field, a manual assessment is required to retrieve that information. In order to retrieve the requested information, it would be necessary to manually review all crimes within the timeframe requested to determine which, if any are relevant to your request, which would exceed the time limit allowed under the Act. Furthermore, whether a person investigated for committing an offence is an asylum seeker or refugee is not mandatorily recorded.

Pursuant to Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act this letter acts as a Refusal Notice.

Pursuant to Section 16 of the Act I am required to offer you advice and assistance with regarding to refining your request to within the ‘appropriate limit’ (time/cost limit). However, we could do a free text search of all crimes within the timeframe requested to determine if there are any reports relevant to your request. This may trigger a further excess cost exemption depending on the number of reports returned. If you wish to discuss this please do not hesitate to contact me.

Please note that systems used for recording information are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data.  It should be noted therefore that this force’s response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other responses you may receive.