Request

A

How many arrests have been made in St Helier for common assault in 2017, 2018 and so far in 2019?

B

How many arrests have been made in St Helier for grave and criminal assault in 2017, 2018 so far in 2019?

C

Of the above offences, how many involved the use of a weapon? Could you specify what weapons have been used, eg glass.

D

Of the above offences, how many have taken place in licensed premises or have been linked to excessive alcohol consumption?

Response

A to D

Arrests are recorded by “place of arrest” rather than by parish. The term “weapon” is also not ordinarily recorded, but rather the type of weapon, for example a knife, bottle, bat. The term “licensed premises” is also not routinely recorded in custody records, but rather the name of the particular licensed premises.

In order to provide the number of arrests in St Helier, whether or not a weapon was used, and whether or not the assaults took place on licensed premises will require manual research of “free text” log entries of 1,726 custody records. It is estimated that three minutes per custody record would be required to undertake this task, resulting in over 86 hours of work and exceeding the cost limit. Article 16(1) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 is therefore engaged.

The information that can be provided within the cost limit is set out below:

*Figures are accurate as of 25 September 2019.

Article Applied

Article 16 A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.