Arrests/Cautions for Ketamine related offences last 5 years

Your request details

1. For each of the last five years how many people were arrested and/or cautioned for Ketamine related offences?
   
   2. Please provide a breakdown of what they were arrested or cautioned for exactly?
   
   3. Please provide a breakdown of their age and sex.
   
   4. For all cases involving suspects aged under 18 please provide a summary of the MO section of the incident report with any personal information redacted. If this goes over the cost limit please provide as many as you can starting in 2025 and working backwards until you reach the cost limit.

Response

Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires South Yorkshire Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt), to provide you the applicant with a notice which:

1. states that fact,
2. specifies the exemption in question and
3. states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.

The following exemption(s) apply to the disclosure of the information:

Exemption applied - Section 40(2) Personal Information

This is an absolute exemption and therefore a Public Interest Test is not relevant.

Reasons for applying exemption 40(2)

Section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act exempts information if it constitutes the personal data of any individual and disclosure would breach Data Protection principles. The term 'personal data' refers to information relating to a living individual who can be identified, either directly or indirectly. This can include obvious identifiers such as a name, or information which, when combined with other data, could enable an individual to be identified.

Due to the request relating to Ketamine offences and the low numbers involved, disclosure of the MO summaries as well as individual year breakdowns and individual age breakdowns could potentially lead to the identification of individuals. This would constitute a breach of the data protection principles and is therefore exempt under Section 40(2).

I approached our Performance Review Unit for assistance with your request. An analyst within this unit has conducted a search of our Crime Management System - Connect which records complaints or allegations of those matters, which the Home Office specify should be recorded as 'crimes'. All our systems are designed and used first and foremost for Policing Purposes and have limited search capability. They provided me with the following explanation regarding their search criteria:

Criteria Used - Incident Created Date is between 01/01/2021 and 31/12/2025, SYP & crime only filter, Full Offence Title is equal to Attempted - Having possession of a controlled drug - Class B - Ketamine, Attempted - Permitting premises to be used for unlawful purposes - Class B - Ketamine, Attempted - Possession of a controlled drug with intent to supply - Class B - Ketamine, Attempted - Production or being concerned in production of a controlled drug - Class B - Ketamine, Attempted - Supplying or offering to supply or being concerned in the supply of a controlled drug - Class B - Ketamine, Having possession of a controlled drug - Class B - Ketamine, Permitting premises to be used for unlawful purposes - Class B - Ketamine, Possession of a controlled drug with intent to supply - Class B - Ketamine, Production or being concerned in production of a controlled drug - Class B - Ketamine, Supplying or offering to supply or being concerned in the supply of a controlled drug - Class B - Ketamine, Person Role is equal to SUSPECT, SUSPECT (INSUFFICIENT TO PROCEED), SUSPECT (INTERVIEWED), SUSPECT (NO ACTION) EVIDENTIAL DIFF., SUSPECT (NO ACTION) TIME LIMIT EXPIRED, SUSPECT (NOT INTERVIEWED), SUSPECT (PROSECUTION PREVENTED), SUSPECT PRE ATHENA

Question 1

Question 2

Question 3

Please note, every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that data has been extracted from data sources used by this force for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording systems and information assets.

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures/data for any requests may have limitations, and this should be taken into account when those data sets are used.

Police forces do not use generic systems or identical procedures for capturing the data. For these reasons this response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with responses you may receive from other police forces.