FOI 1050/26
REQUEST
Please provide the following information, broken down by year, for 2019 to 2025:
- How many voyeurism offences did your force record each year?
- How many harassment offences did your force record each year?
- How many of these offences involved someone being filmed or photographed without their knowledge or consent using wearable recording devices?
- How many recorded offences specifically mentioned Meta smart glasses, or other smart recording glasses, being used?
- Of the offences involving smart recording glasses, how many resulted in a charge?
- Of the offences involving smart recording glasses, how many resulted in a conviction?
RESPONSE
Your request for information has now been considered, and I am not obliged to supply the information you have requested.
Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires South Wales Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which:
(a) states that fact,
(b) specifies the exemption in question and
(c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.
In relation to your request, the following exemption applies:
Section 12(1) – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit.
The data you have requested is not routinely collated in the format that would easily answer your query, therefore, to accurately answer your request we would need to individually interrogate all crimes recorded under the categories of ‘Voyeurism’ and ‘Harassment’ to establish if the offences involved someone being filmed or photographed without their knowledge or consent using wearable recording devices. There were 41,042 records retrieved for the time frame requested.
We estimate it would take a minimum of 5 minutes to interrogate each occurrence to retrieve the information you have requested.
We therefore estimate it would take in excess of 3,420 hours.
It is estimated that the cost of providing you with the information is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the "appropriate level" as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
In the case of the police service, the appropriate limit is £450 which has been calculated to equate to a total of 18 hours of work.
If any part of the request exceeds the fees limit, then Section 12 applies to the whole request.
In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a refusal notice.
Excess cost removes the forces obligation under the Freedom of Information Act, however under Section 16 – Duty to provide advice and assistance, an authority is required to offer an applicant the opportunity to redefine their request within the cost limit. Unfortunately, due to the way in which data is recorded, we can see no feasible way in which you could refine your request.