FOI Human Trafficking (928-2023/24)

Request

I am writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to request the following information relating to details held by your force concerning the Modern Slavery Act 2015:
Q1. Do the information systems used by your force have special tags or markers to indicate suspicions or indicators of modern slavery and/or human trafficking ?
Q2. Does your force have a crime registra spoc monitoring the quality or crime reports generated within the force relating to modern slavery and human trafficking ?
Q3. What is the average lifetime of a modern slavery and/or human trafficking investigation within your force ?
Q4. Between January 2023 and December 2023 how many modern slavery and/or human trafficking records are logged within your system (intel, public reporting, crime reports etc) of which how many have been allocated to an investigating officer and a case file generated ? and of those closed what are the 2 highest recorded closing codes ?
Q5. Of that number how many are live modern slavery investigations today (15th of December 2023)  and of those how many victims does that relate to?

For the purpose of this request we are considering an investigation to be as defined by the college of policing as an investigation conducted by police officers/civilian investigators with a view to it being ascertained whether a person should be charged with an offence, or whether a person charged with an offence is awaiting trial.

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 relation to Q3, the length of time taken to conduct an investigation is not recorded within a searchable field. In order to retrieve the requested information, it would be necessary to manually review all relevant crimes to determine how long each investigation took. This would involve 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 information for the remaining questions if you would like to resubmit your request and omit 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.