FOI 1310-2023/24- Revenge porn

Request:

I am writing to request information on reports of revenge porn, or the disclosure of sexual photographs and films with the intent to cause distress, received by your force between 2017 and 2024. In particular, I would like to request information on:

Q1. The number of reports of revenge porn (disclosure of sexual photographs and films with the intent to cause distress) received each year between 2017 and 2024

Q2. The number of revenge porn cases in which alleged victims were unwilling or unable to contribute to police efforts to prosecute the alleged offender

Q3. The number of convictions made for revenge porn

Q4. The number of reports of threats to share photographs or films which show, or appear to show, someone in an intimate state

This would be a breach of Section 188(4) of the Online Safety Act 2023

Q5. The number of cases involving threats to share intimate photographs or films in which alleged victims were unwilling or unable to contribute to police efforts to prosecute the alleged offender

Q6. The number of convictions made in cases involving threats to share intimate photographs or films

I would appreciate it if you could provide me with the most recent data available on the above between January 2017 and March 2024. The format I would like this data to be presented in is exhibited by the attached Excel file.

As is shown by the attached file, I would like the data to be presented in a table with the following headers for each column:

• Year
• Number of reports of revenge porn (disclosure of sexual photographs and films with the intent to cause distress)
• The number of convictions made for revenge porn
• Number of revenge porn cases in which alleged victims were unwilling or unable to contribute to police efforts to prosecute the alleged offender
• Number of reports of threats to share photographs or films which show, or appear to show, someone in an intimate state
• Number of convictions made in cases involving threats to share intimate photographs or films
• Number of cases involving threats to share intimate photographs or films in which alleged victims were unwilling or unable to contribute to police efforts to prosecute the alleged offender

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 related to disclose or threats to disclose private sexual photographs / film with intent to cause distress crimes between 2017 and 2024 to ascertain conviction data, which would mean reading through hundreds of reports,  which 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 parts 1, 2, 4 and 5 of your request if you resubmit and omit part 3 and 6. 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.