Ballymena arrests

Request Number: FOI/16384

Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Crime Statistics

Subject: Ballymena arrests

Request and Answer:
Your request for information has now been considered. In respect of Section 1(1)(a) of the Act we can confirm that the Police Service of Northern Ireland does hold some information to which your request relates and this is being provided to you.
We consider the information you seek in your request exempt by virtue of Section 40 of FOIA and have detailed our rationale as to why this exemption applies. We have also provided you with links to guidance issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office which we have followed in responding to your request.

Request Details
I am writing to request information under the Freedom of information Act 2000 following my prior request FOI/16274 regarding the arrests connected to the Ballymena disorder.
Your previous response provided only broad adult and minor age ranges. Can you please provide a more granular breakdown as seen below:

Request 1
A breakdown of the ages of all individuals arrested in connection to the Ballymena disorder, provided in the format held by PSNI systems.
This may be
a) individual ages or
b) age ranges/bands, depending on how age data is recorded and stored.

I am not requesting any identifying information—only anonymised age data.

Request 2
A breakdown of the arrests by gender, e.g., number of males and number of females arrested.

Request 3
A combined breakdown of age and gender (e.g., number of males/females within each age or age band).

Answers 1, 2 and 3
As some of the information requested refers to low level data, to go into any further detail will risk identifying individuals, particularly children and females. It could also lead to identifying people who have not been prosecuted. Therefore we are exempting the data broken down to specific ages and have grouped the data for juveniles and adults. The explanation for this exemption is detailed below.

Overall suspect age range: 12 - 56

Number of Adult Males (18 or over): 65

Number of Adult Females over (18 or over): 6

Number of Juvenile Males (17 or under): 26

Number of Juvenile Females (17 or under): 3

Section 17(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires the Police Service of Northern Ireland, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which:

1. states that fact,
2. specifies the exemption in question and
3. states (if not otherwise apparent) why the exemption applies.

The exemption/s, as well as the factors the Department considered when deciding where the public interest lies, are listed below:

Section 40(2)(a)(b) by virtue of Section 40(3)(a)(i) – Personal Information – Information constitutes personal data and disclosure would contravene any of the Data Protection principles.

The full text of exemptions can be found at www.legislation.gov.uk and further guidance on how they operate can be located on the Information Commissioners Office website www.ico.org.uk.

Section 40
Section 40 (2) of the FOIA is an absolute exemption which means there is no requirement on PSNI to consider whether there is a public interest in disclosure. It is an interface exemption and we must consider whether release of the information would breach the General Data Protection Regulations (‘GDPR’) or the Data Protection Act 2018 (‘DPA’) Third party personal information constitutes ‘personal data’ under the GDPR (Article 4) and DPA (Part 1 s.3).

Under the Freedom of Information Act, PSNI must consider if information can be released into the public domain. We have therefore considered whether the disclosure of this personal data is subject to the exemption at Section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 by virtue of s40 (3)(A)(a).
As information is ‘personal data’, PSNI considered whether disclosure would contravene any of the six data protection principles contained within the GDPR or DPA.

The six data protection principles are good information handling standards which PSNI must comply with in relation to how it handles personal information, including deciding whether to disclose it or not.
In particular, the first principle requires personal data to be processed in a ‘lawful and fair’ manner. In considering whether it is ‘fair’ to any individual to release information about them, PSNI considered the likely expectations of those individuals and the nature of the information involved. Individuals must have confidence that their information is treated sensitively and appropriately by PSNI. The PSNI has a duty to protect the personal data of all individuals, including officers and staff, and to disclose the broken down as per your Request would be unfair to those individuals. We consider it would be extremely unfair to those individuals and therefore it would be a breach of the first principle of data protection legislation as we consider those individuals would not have any reasonable expectation that PSNI would not disclose information of this nature relating to them. This information is therefore exempt under section 40 (2) of the FOIA as it contravenes data protection legislation to release it and the PSNI has made the decision to withhold the information.