Purchase of Sexual Services

Request Number: FOI/14990

Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Arrests

Subject: Purchase of Sexual Services

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 1
With regard to Human Trafficking and Prostitution, since the 1st of June 2015 to the present day, how many individuals have been: (a) Arrested (b) Charged (c) Offered a discretionary disposal (d) Taken a discretionary disposal or (e) Given a caution (f) Convicted of paying for sexual services of a person (Article 64A of the Sexual Offences Order 2008, as amended by section 15 of the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Act.

Request 2
Could I ask that these statistics be broken down by year (calendar or financial, whichever is easier for you).

Request 3
Could I further ask for the ages and gender of those arrested?
Where a person identifies as Trans - please specify.

Request 4
The police district in which they were arrested?

Request 5
The date on which the arrest took place to be provided?

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.

Whilst some of the information you seek is held by the PSNI, it is not held in a format that would allow its retrieval without manual intervention. PSNI is not saying it does not hold the data that you request, however to extract the data you have sought in your request would require a manual trawl of PSNI’s records – hence putting the request grossly over the 18 hour cost limit set out under the FOIA.

Discretionary Disposals ceased when Community Resolution Notices (CRN) commenced from 30th June 2016. To establish if a suspect was offered a Discretionary Disposal or CRN would require a manual review of all recorded offences of this nature since 1st June 2015. Additionally, further retrieval time would be added as all records would have to be manually examined to retrieve the date, year, age, gender and location for any records where the suspect was offered a discretionary disposal/CRN, had received a discretionary disposal/CRN or been given a caution. This would involve opening several record tabs and possibly interrogating the Occurrence Enquiry Log for each occurrence.

There was in excess of 115 arrests for ‘paying for sexual services’ since 1 June 2015. It has been estimated that it would take a minimum of 15 minutes per record to retrieve the data described above. Thus, to answer parts of your request would be in excess of 18 hours.
Under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, if any part of the request exceeds the cost threshold then the whole request will be in excess of costs and there is no obligation to answer any part of the request.
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 may be able to provide a response in regards to the following:

• Number of arrests for paying for sexual services of a person by gender (Article 64A of the Sexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 2008) ( 1 June 2015 – 31 May 2025).
• Number of arrests and subsequently charged for paying for sexual services of a person (Article 64A of the Sexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 2008) ( 1 June 2015 – 31 May 2025).
• Number of arrests for paying for sexual services of a person by age (Article 64A of the Sexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 2008) ( 1 June 2015 – 31 May 2025).
• Number of arrests1 for paying for sexual services of a person by policing district (Article 64A of the Sexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 2008) ( 1 June 2015 – 31 May 2025).
• The number of suspects that received Discretionary Disposal or Community Resolution Notice for paying for sexual services of a person, since 1st June 20215.
• The number of suspects that received a Caution for paying for sexual services of a person, since 1st June 20215.

Additionally, to assist please note the following:

• Conviction data is held by the Department of Justice so to get an accurate figure for convictions in relation to paying for sexual services of a person, the request for this data should be directed there.
• In regards to Request 4, it is likely that this information would be exempt by virtue of Section 40. Due to the low numbers (when the data is broken down by age, gender and district per year) giving specific dates could identify individuals and their personal information which would breach the General Data Protection Regulations (‘GDPR’).

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.