FOI Under 18's Terrorism Suspects (0213-2022/23)

Request

Please provide the following information for the financial years 2015 to 2021 (beginning 01 April 2015 ending 31 March 2022) broken down by year i.e. 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022:
How many people under the age of 18 are known to your force area for terrorism related activity?
Of those known for terrorism related activity, how many were referred by your force area as a First Responder to the National Referral Mechanism as potential victims of human trafficking and/or modern slavery?   
How many people under the age of 18 were arrested by your force area for terrorism related offences? 
Terrorism related activity means the activity described in Section 4 of the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act 2011.
Terrorism related offence means any an offence listed in Schedule A1 to the Sentencing Code (terrorism offences: England and Wales) or section 69 of the Sentencing Code or section 30 of the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 (in the case of an offender sentenced in England and Wales before the Sentencing Code applied) or an act constituting an offence under the law in force in a country outside the United Kingdom that would have constituted an offence if it had been committed in England or subject to a TPIM notice (within the meaning given by section 2 of the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act 2011 or subject to a temporary exclusion order imposed under section 2 of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015.

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. In order to retrieve the requested information, it would be necessary to manually review each record where a person is, or was under 18 for the timeframes requested to ascertain if they are, or have been involved in terrorism related activity. This would involve reading through thousands of records, 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, 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 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.