Hate Crimes

Request Number: [FOI/13517]

Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Hate Crime and Equality

Subject: Hate Crimes

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:
https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1199/costs_of_compliance_exceeds_appropriate_limit.pdf

Request
I would be grateful if you could treat this email as a Freedom of Information request for the following information
 
Request 1
The number and types of hate crimes aggravated by sectarian hostility recorded annually by the police between the years 1998 to 2024 

Request 2
The number and types of hate crimes aggravated by sectarian hostility between the years 1998 to 2024 in which criminal convictions were secured and sentences were increased as a result of these types of hate crimes.

Request 3
The number and types of hate crimes aggravated by sectarian hostility between the years 1998 to 2024 involving acts of violence in which criminal convictions were secured and sentences were increased as a result of these types of violent hate crimes.

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.

Requests 2 and 3 bring the request in full over cost.

Whilst the requested information is held, it is not held centrally. A manual examination of each incident would be required in order to check on the presence of a conviction and the subsequent sentence. As an example, between 2006-2023, there were 16,057 Hate Crimes with a sectarian motivation. Using a conservative estimate of 10 minutes per estimate, this would take approximately 2,676 hours, bringing the request in full 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.

Request 1 - The full data series for all sectarian hate crimes, including a breakdown by crime classification, is available in the spreadsheet accompanying our Trends in Hate Motivated Incidents and Crimes Recorded by the Police in Northern Ireland 2004/05 to 2023/24 bulletin. Please note that information on sectarian crimes is available from 2005/06.  This is available on the PSNI website: https://www.psni.police.uk/about-us/our-publications-and-reports/official-statistics/hate-motivation-statistics

Note - Collection of the sectarian motivation only began in April 2005, therefore this information is not held prior to April 2005. The full data series for sectarian crimes starts from 2005/06 and is available in the publications linked above. For more information on the background of these statistics, please see the 'Things you need to know about this release; section of the Annual Trends bulletin.

Requests 2 and 3 - Unfortunately, due to the way in which the information is stored, we are unable to provide refinement for this request. Please note that crime recording is a separate process from how suspects are managed through the entire justice process. Once a prosecution file is prepared and forwarded by police to PPS, any subsequent updates are not recorded on the relevant system by police and therefore the data is not owned be PSNI.

Therefore, we advise that requests for information on convictions and enhanced sentencing should be directed to the Department of Justice. Please note that the current enhanced sentencing model does not cover sectarian crimes, therefore it is vitally important that the appropriate public authority is contacted to provide the correct information.