November 17, 2025 | Incident and Crime Statistics , Arrests
Request Number: FOI/16062
Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Arrests
Subject: Arrests Involving Children
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 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 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/
Request
I would be grateful if you could provide the following information, covering, (where possible) the past five years (2020-2025).
Question 1
The total number of arrests involving looked after children (LAC) in Northern Ireland broken down by:
a) Year
b) Age
c) Gender
d) Offence category (if available)
Question 2
The total number of arrests involving non-looked after children for comparison (same breakdown as above).
Question 3
The number of stop and searches involving LAC, and the corresponding number for non-looked after children, with outcome data if available.
Question 4
The number of youth cautions or other disposals issued to LAC compared to non-looked after children.
Question 5
The number of LAC detained overnight in police custody.
Question 6
Any PSNI policies, guidance or training materials relating to interactions with LAC or care-experienced young people.
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.
Questions 4 & 5 take this request over cost –
Each Community Resolution Notice (CRN) would need to be checked manually to assess if the person who completed the Community Resolution Notice was in ‘Looked after Children’ (LAC) or not. Furthermore, this may not be accurate, as it may have changed since the Community Resolution Notice was completed and this information may not have been requested or recorded on each incident. There are over 6,900 Community Resolution Notices’ that would need to be reviewed to ascertain if this is information from 2020 – 2025. If this took 10 minutes per serial, this would be approximately 185 hours.
Unfortunately, PSNI do not hold data on the looked after status of children, an examination of the custody record may be able to identify if a child was a looked after child based on their residence or the appropriate adult assigned to assist them, however this is not a reliable method as the child may not provide information to allow this identification.
PSNI do not specifically ask or record if a child is a Looked after Child whilst in custody. Children under a care order should be flagged on Niche, this is not a custody function, and it is also a changeable status (i.e. relevant at the time) and cannot be extracted with our custody data. Even if we were to examine individual records, there are over 5,400 detentions of children since PSNI records start in April 2021. Taking a conservative 5 minutes to review each record – 5 minutes x 5,400 = 27,000 minutes = 450 hours. To examine these would result in an over cost.
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.
PSNI cannot identify ‘Looked after Children’ (LAC) and therefore cannot provide a response to Question 1, Question 2 & Question 5 regarding arrests/custody. There is no marker on the stop and search database to identify stops involving ‘Looked after Children’ (LAC) for Question 3.
For Question 4 - We may be able to provide the number of ‘Community Resolution Notices’ completed by youths, however, this cannot be broken down into the ‘Looked after Children’ or ‘Non-Looked after Children’.
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.