Developing Information on Hate Crime Recorded by the Police in Scotland: FOI Review

Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002


Information requested

You asked a number of questions about Third Party reporting agencies and Scottish Government funding, analysis and monitoring in relation to Hate Crime, bullying, prejudice and ‘Community Cohesion’. Your request is set out in full in the annex to this letter. You requested an internal review as you stated that you cannot accept that the Scottish Government does not hold third party agencies and reporting data and data on the interconnection with Police Scotland - Police Scotland does not fund these agencies to my knowledge it is the government. Also, data on monitoring and analyses.

Response

I have now completed my review of our response to your request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) for the following case reference 202000043165. In your review request you added further explanation of your original request which was helpful.

I have considered how your original request was carried out with respect to compliance with Scottish Government procedures and whether the necessary steps were taken to provide you with a full response.

Having considered the case afresh and taking account of the points you raise in your request for review, I am satisfied that the information you were seeking is not held by the Scottish Government. I have therefore concluded that we were entitled to respond under section 17(1) of FOISA for the reasons set out in our initial response. I am satisfied that the original decision should be confirmed, but with some technical modifications and to provide some additional explanatory comments which I hope you find helpful.

In response to parts one and eight of your initial request, we advised you that the Scottish Government does not hold the information you requested because this information is held by Police Scotland.
Where possible we provided links to information published by Police Scotland, however we should have also included details of how to make a request for information to Police Scotland. You may wish to contact Police Scotland via https://www.scotland.police.uk/access-to-information in this regard. 

In response to part three of your initial request, we referred to a previous response to you under reference 202000039717 which disclosed information falling within the scope of this part of the request subject to this review. In this regard we should have applied an exemption under section 25(1) to this information. You may have retained a copy of our response to your previous request reference 202000039717, however this information is also available - https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-202000039717/.

In addition to the technical points noted above, I have decided to provide you some further background information below on the sources of information used to produce those publications that were provided to you.
Firstly, you may find it helpful to look at the background information on Third Party Reporting Centres on the Police Scotland website here https://www.scotland.police.uk/contact-us/hate-crime-and-thirdparty-reporting/.

With regard to the setting up of Third Party Reporting Centres, you may be aware that these were set up following the Stephen Lawrence inquiry. Recommendation 16 refers to the setting up of Third Party Reporting Centres.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/277111/4262.pdf

The information used to produce the report Developing Information on Hate Crime Recorded by the Police (https://www.gov.scot/publications/developing-information-hate-crime-recorded-policescotland) was provided by Police Scotland and sourced from their Interim Vulnerable Persons Database (IVPD). As highlighted in the original response, the information provided to the Scottish Government to produce this publication does not include information on whether crimes have initially been reported by ‘Third Party agencies’. You may wish to contact Police Scotland directly regarding the information they hold on hate crime recorded by the police (https://www.scotland.police.uk/access-to-information/).

The Criminal Proceedings in Scotland, 2018-19 publication
(https://www.gov.scot/publications/criminal-proceedings-scotland-2018-19/) is produced using statistical information on the Scottish Government Criminal Proceedings Database. This database is derived from data held on the Criminal History System (CHS), a central database used for the electronic recording of information on persons accused and/or convicted of committing a criminal act.

Police Scotland send a limited selection of data from the CHS to the Scottish Government that are used to produce the Criminal Proceedings in Scotland statistics. The CHS is maintained by Police Scotland and they are responsible for managing its operation and own the majority of the data. The CHS does not include information on whether crimes have initially been reported by ‘Third Party agencies’ and therefore we were unable to provide the information requested. 

I hope that this additional information is helpful to your understanding of why the Scottish Government does not hold the information you have requested about Third Party Reporting Centres.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

Contact

Please quote the FOI reference
Central Enquiry Unit
Email: ceu@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000

The Scottish Government
St Andrews House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG

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