Mr Danny Bradshaw

[email address]

Tuesday, 26 January 2010

Our ref: 2110

Dear Mr Bradshaw

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000 REQUEST

Thank you for your Freedom of Information Act request which was received on 26 December 2009, in which you asked for the following:

The Freedom of Information Act is a public disclosure regime for non personal information, the Act is not a private regime, information disclosed under it is thereafter deemed to be in the public domain, and therefore freely available to the general public upon request.

Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 creates a statutory right of access to recorded information held by public authorities i.e. the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). This right is to be informed whether the information requested is held by the public authority or not, and if the information exists, for it to be communicated. A public authority must reply to such a request promptly and in any event, not later than twenty working days after receipt.

Dealing with your first enquiry, it is not possible to provide pre-charge decision data for cases involving offences under `child sex offences' contrary to the Sexual Offences Act 2003. This is because pre-charge decision data is captured before a specific offence or principal offence category is recorded in the database. Data could only be captured by examination of individual case files, at disproportionate cost.

With regard to your second enquiry, the CPS is able to provide some data on prosecution outcomes by a broad principal offence category of Sexual Offences, further refined to include only those defendant cases which have been flagged as `Child Abuse'. The Sexual Offence category includes those defendant cases where the principal offence was:

A case generally attracts a `Child Abuse' flag when the victim is aged under 18 and the nature of the offence involves sex, violence, cruelty or neglect, abduction or kidnapping; the age of the offender is immaterial.

A table of prosecution outcomes data is attached. These data are broken down by type of conviction; unsuccessful outcomes; and total outcomes for 2007, 2008 and 2009 and include those cases where the defendant's case has been flagged as child abuse and further filtered by principal offence category `sexual offences'.

The CPS is unable to provide prosecution outcomes by the specific offences under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (or indeed specific offences under any Act) without examination of individual case files.

Data on `child abuse' prosecutions by principle offence are included in the Violence against Women Annual Report 2008-09 which may be of some interest to you. The report is available on the CPS website at:

http://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/equality/vaw/index.html

If you are unhappy with the level of service you have received in relation to your request from the Crown Prosecution Service you may ask for an internal review. You should contact the Freedom of Information Unit (Appeals), 50 Ludgate Hill, London, EC4M 7EX, if you wish to ask for a review.

If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you have the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Yours sincerely

Miss S Kadir

Information Management Unit

Tel: 0207 796 8000

Fax: 0207 796 8439

E-mail: [CPS request email]

2

The CPS incorporates RCPO

Business Information Systems Directorate, Crown Prosecution Service, 50 Ludgate Hill, London EC4M 7EX

www.cps.gov.uk