FOI Apostate Crimes (1308-2023/24)

Request

Q1. Does your force record crimes against apostates, within formal or informal records?
Q2. If yes, please provide data for the last 5 years, including the type of offence, the religion or belief of the perpetrator, and of the victim. Please detail any prosecuted cases including the outcome, and also No Further Action (NFA) cases, or any other relevant data.
Q3. Has leaving or changing religion or belief been recorded as a factor for any offences relating to; domestic abuse, coercive control or honour-based violence, or hate crimes against different protected characteristics eg sexual orientation? If yes, please provide data for the last 5 years.
Q4. Does your force have any formal or informal policy or operational guidance relating to crime against apostates?  If yes please can you provide detail on which policies or operational guidance this is found in and provide a copy of the full text for relevant sections.

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. As a gesture of goodwill I have decided to disclose the located information to you. Please see below.

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.

In relation to Q3, 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. 

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

Q1. No – this would be recorded as a hate crime within the religion strand.

Q2. N/A

Q4. No. The local guidance is based upon the national guidance on the recording of hate crime from with the Home Office Counting Rules for Recorded Crime. Further details can be found on the link below.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/counting-rules-for-recorded-crime

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, due to the information provided above I am unable to suggest how you may refine your request and still receive the information within the cost threshold.  If you wish to discuss this please do not hesitate to contact

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.