Arrests

Request Number: FOI/16486

Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Crime Statistics

Subject: Arrests

Request and Answer:
Your request for information below has now been considered. In respect of Section 1(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) We can confirm that the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) does hold the information you have requested however it is estimated that the cost of complying with your request for information would exceed the “appropriate costs limit” under Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and this will be further explained below. PSNI have followed the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) guidance ‘Requests where the cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limit’ in relation to this request, which also provides further detail on the application of Section 12 (1) of the FOIA. This guidance is available on the ICO website at the following link:
ico.org.uk/for-organisations/foi/guide-to-managing-an-foi-request/charging-a-fee-and-cost-limits/

Question 1
How many total arrests had the PSNI made in 2024?

Question 2
How many total arrests have the PSNI made in 2025 thus far?

Question 3
Of those arrests made in 2024 by the PSNI, which city/town saw the highest/lowest number of arrests as a percentage of their population?

Question 4
Of those arrests made in 2025 by the PSNI, which city/town saw the highest/lowest number of arrests as a percentage of their population?

Question 5
As a total number, how many violent offenders were arrested by the PSNI in 2024?

Question 6 
As a total number, how many violent offenders were arrested by the PSNI in 2025?

Question 7
For 2024 and 2025 individually, of the arrests made by the PSNI for violent offenders, how many of each total arrests per year were male?

Question 8
For 2024 and 2025 individually, of the arrests made by the PSNI for violent offenders, how many of each total arrests per year were under the age of 18?

Question 9
For 2024 and 2025 individually, how many PSNI Officers were injured when making arrests of violent offenders?

Clarification Sought
In relation to questions 5-9, can you clarify what is meant by your phrase "violent offender”?

Clarification Received
To clarify my request, "violent offender" refers to somebody that was arrested for committing any kind of violent crime. For example, assault or battery, robbery etc.

Answer
Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires the Police Service of Northern Ireland, when refusing to provide such information (because the cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limit) to provide you the applicant with a notice which states that fact.

It is estimated that the cost of complying with your request for information would exceed the “appropriate costs limit” under Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Section 12 of FOIA allows a public authority to refuse to deal with a request where it estimates that it would exceed the appropriate limit to either comply with the request in its entirety or confirm or deny whether the requested information is held. The estimate must be reasonable in the circumstances of the case. The ‘appropriate limit’ is currently £600 for central government and £450 for all other public authorities including PSNI. The relevant Regulations which define the appropriate limit for section 12 purposes are The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulation 2004 SI 2004 No 3244. These are known as the ‘Fees Regulations’ for brevity.

Regulation 4(3) of the Fees Regulations states that a public authority can take into account the costs it reasonably expects to incur in carrying out the following permitted activities in complying with the request:

(i) determining whether the information is held;
(ii) locating the information, or a document containing it;
(iii) retrieving the information, or a document containing it; and
(iv) extracting the information from a document containing it.

Under those regulations PSNI can calculate the time spent on each of these permitted activities at £25 per hour (thus if the activity(s) takes more than 18 hours PSNI will be in excess of the ‘appropriate limit’).

When a public authority is estimating whether the appropriate limit is likely to be exceeded, it can include the costs of complying with two or more requests if the conditions laid out in Regulation 5 of the Fees Regulations can be satisfied. Those conditions require the requests to be: 

• made by one person, or by different persons who appear to the public authority to be acting in concert or in pursuance of a campaign; 
• made for the same or similar information; and 
• received by the public authority within any period of 60 consecutive working days. 

Regulation 5(2) of the Fees Regulations requires that the requests which are to be aggregated relate “to any extent” to the same or similar information. This is quite a wide test but public authorities should still ensure that the requests meet this requirement.

Enquiries made in relation to your request has identified that retrieval of information to respond to your request would exceed the FOI legislative cost of 18 hours as set by the Secretary of State.

The information you seek in question 9 is not held in a retrievable format on PSNI database. To determine if an officer was injured when making an arrest would require a manual trawl through all relevant occurrences. In 2024 and 2025 a total of 2,833 officers reported they were injured on duty, this number only reflects those officers who submitted an accident/incident form. There may also be officers who have been injured but not reported it. To determine which of those officers who submitted a form that were specifically injured while effecting an arrest would involve manual interrogation of each report to determine the circumstances and if it relates to your request. Two systems would need to be manually cross checked to gather the data, there may also be multiple entries for each injury sustained. If it took as little as one minute to check each incident this would equate to approximately 47 hours of work. Therefore, this request is grossly over the cost limits set out in FOIA.

In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter should be considered as a Refusal Notice, and the request has therefore been closed. 

Advice and assistance
You may wish to submit a refined request in order that the cost of complying with your request may be facilitated within the ‘appropriate limit’. In compliance with Section 16 of the Act, we have considered how your request may be refined to bring it under the appropriate limit.

We can provide responses for questions 1, 2, 5, 6, 7 and 8.

In relation to questions 3 and 4, this information is not held on PSNI database and we are not required to create information for the purposes of a FOI request. 

Submission of a refined request would be treated as a new request, and considered in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, including consideration of relevant Part II exemptions.