FOI 0783-2024/25- Hate crimes and non-crime hate incidents

Request:

Q1. Broken down by month and type of hate offence (e.g. disability, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, sexual orientation, transgender identity, alternative subculture, and any other listed category), every hate crime and non-crime hate incident recorded by your force in the following years: 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 (up until 31 October).

Q2. For every recorded offence in the same period,

- a) the exact nature of the actions or words used,

- b) where it was carried out (either a location such as school, workplace, street etc, or a specific social media platform/internet website),

- c) the age of the perpetrator.

Q3. For each recorded offence in the same period, the action taken by police and outcome of the offence (e.g. £50 fine, no further action, et cetera, sent for prosecution, et cetera).

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, in relation to Q2a it would be necessary to manually review over 5500 records to establish the exact nature of the actions or words used in each crime or incident over the timeframe requested. In relation to non-crime hate incidents and Q2c, due to the way nominals involvement is recorded, this would also require a manual review to establish such involvement and the ages of those involved, this manual process would exceed the time limit allowed under the Act. 

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 may be able to provide some information for Q1, Q2b, Q2c in relation to crimes only and Q3.  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.