FOI Victim Suicides (558-2024/25)

Request

Can I please request the following information under the Freedom of Information Act.

Q1. How many Suspected Victim Suicides (SVSDA) as defined by the National Police Chief's Council have been recorded by your force in the last three years?

Please provide annual breakdown from Sept 2021- till the most recent date of your last recording.

a) Of these SVSDA cases, how many cases had a forensic post mortem?

Please provide annual breakdown from Sept 2021- till the most recent date of your last recording

Q2. Of the SVSDA cases recorded by your force in the last three years (Sept 2021 – till most recent date of your recording), how many resulted in a criminal investigation being opened?

Please provide annual breakdown from Sept 2021- till the most recent date of your last recording

a) Of those SVSDA cases where a criminal investigation was opened, under what categories were these investigations finalised?

Please give results by outcome type as classified by the Home Office (See: Outcome Types) & annual breakdown

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 sudden death records and then review those reports for any person who had been a victim of crime and had committed suicide. This would involve thousands 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, 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.