Investigations and convictions of police officers for rape and other sexual offences

Response

Avon and Somerset Police holds information on the subject of your request. However, we cannot provide a response without exceeding the appropriate cost limit. This is because the information is not recorded in a way that allows automated retrieval. Extensive manual searches of our files would therefore be required to complete our response.

 

Our Professional Standards Department (PSD) record information within Centurion, our database for conduct cases. Within Centurion, there is a data field to record cases with a ‘criminal indicator’, if they involve or relate to a criminal investigation. However, there is no field within Centurion to record the offence type or the crime reference number. To identify the information you have requested in questions 1 and 2, there is therefore a need to cross reference information held on Centurion with information held on our crime recording system, Niche. For question 3, there is also a need to cross reference with information held by our Human Resources department (HR).

 

For the timeframe of your request, PSD have recorded 170 cases with a criminal indicator. To identify which of these relate specifically to rape, other sexual offences, stalking and harassment, exposure or voyeurism, each of these cases would need to be manually reviewed to identify the corresponding Niche crime reference number. In some cases, this may take just a few minutes. However, many take significantly longer due to mis‑recorded indicators, data quality issues, delays and categorisation problems. This would need to be repeated for all 170 cases.

Once Niche reference numbers are identified, they must be passed to our Data Insight team to retrieve the information held on that system. Where the no issues are encountered in cross referencing the details between systems, extracting the criminal case information takes approximately 20–30 minutes. However, additional time may be required for each individual if the records cannot be easily matched. In these cases, staff must manually search HR records using multiple spelling variations and date‑of‑birth checks, which can take up to 30 minutes per person. Locked records, missing subjects and incorrect offence coding further extend the time required.

The data returned from Niche must then be reconciled manually with the original PSD case records. This includes identifying and removing incorrect criminal indicators, re‑checking reference numbers and, where necessary, retrieving offence data manually where cases are restricted or have no linked subject. This reconciliation typically takes 10–20 minutes per case.
Once all data sources are verified, PSD must then construct a single dataset linking each Centurion case to the corresponding Niche offence details, HR information and PSD outcomes. Given the volume of data, the number of individual officers involved and the need to avoid duplication or conflation of information, this final stage is also time‑intensive.

 

When applying the time estimates above to the 170 cases identified, it is clear that fulfilling your request would significantly exceed the 18-hour limit set out in Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act. We therefore cannot comply with the request in its current form.

 

This letter represents a Refusal Notice under the Act.

 

Please note that the fact we are unable to retrieve the information you have requested within the statutory time limit does not mean that individual cases are not managed effectively. Each criminal and misconduct investigation is handled in full in accordance with the relevant policies and procedures, and all information necessary to progress and oversee those investigations is properly recorded. The limitation relates only to our ability to retrospectively collate data across multiple systems for the purposes of this FOI request, not to the way in which cases are investigated or managed. Nonetheless, following this and other similar recent requests, we are reviewing the way that we record information, and exploring whether changes can be made to make it possible to retrieve this type of data in the future.

 

If you would like to refine your request, we may be able to supply you with some information that is held in a way that can be retrieved within the cost limit. For example, if you would like to refine your request to focus on information held entirely within PSD systems, we can supply:

 

• the number of PSD cases with a criminal indicator within the timeframe;
• the allegation sub‑types recorded by PSD for these cases;
• PSD outcomes and other information held solely within the Centurion system.

 

Please let us know if you would like us to consider a further request for this information.

 

You may also find of interest the information we publish in relation to misconduct and sexual misconduct outcomes.