FOI Victims of Cuckooing (0229-2022/23)

Request

Where possible, please could you provide me with the following figures for the year April 2021 - March 2022 (if you do not collect or cannot provide data for one of the categories below, please provide data for the categories that you do or can provide data for):

How many people has the force identified as victims of 'cuckooing' i.e. the practice of taking over the home of an individual in order to establish a base for the purpose of criminal activity?

Of those people identified as victims of cuckooing how many were:

(a) male

(b) female

(c) under the age of 18

(d) over the age of 65

(e) vulnerable adults

(f) dependent on drugs or alcohol

(g) disabled or learning disabled

(h) unemployed

Of those people identified as victims of cuckooing how many have been

(a) arrested, and

(b) charged with criminal offences related to the activities taking place in their property.

Of those people identified as victims of cuckooing who were subsequently arrested and charged with criminal offences related to the activities taking place in their property, which offences were they charged with?

How many people has the force identified as perpetrators of 'cuckooing'?

Of those identified as perpetrators of 'cuckooing' how many were:

(a) male

(b) female

(c) vulnerable adults

(d) aged 16 - 17

(e) aged 15 or under

Of those identified as perpetrators of 'cuckooing' how many have been:

(a) arrested, and

(b) charged with criminal offences related to the cuckooing activity?

Of those people identified as perpetrators of cuckooing who were subsequently arrested and charged with criminal offences related to the cuckooing activity?:

which offences were they charged with?

how many people were charged under

section 1 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 or section 2 of the Modern Slavery 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. North Yorkshire Police Systems are searchable through a number of “fields” within our data recording tools. In respect of this request, as there is no specific crime of “cuckooing”, this is not a searchable field and therefore it would be necessary to manually inspect hundreds of files to ascertain and correlate any data in respect of this request. This 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.