Child Abandonment 2015-24

Request

Dear FOI Officer,

I am submitting this request under the Freedom of Information Act.
This request relates to cases of abandoned babies (infants under the age of 2) that have been investigated by your force over the last decade. Please include babies that have been found dead and alive.

1.Please state the number of cases of infant abandonment that have been investigated by your force in each of the following years: a) 2015, b) 2016, c)2017, d) 2018, e) 2019, f) 2020, g) 2021, h) 2022, i) 2023, j) 2024 so far.

2.If possible, for each case please provide the following information:
a)Was the infant found dead or alive?
b)What was the estimated age of the infant when discovered (in
weeks/months)?
c)In what type of location was the infant found? (I.e., park / public toilet / hospital, rather than address)

If it is not possible to answer questions 2b and 2c, I would be grateful if you could respond with answers to questions 1 and 2a only.

Response

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 the following information and explanation regarding their search criteria:

No Information Held. The specified critera didn't result in any data. This is often caused by applying filters and/or selection steps that are too restrictive or that contain incorrec values. Please check your analysis filters abd selection steps and try again. The filters or selection steps currently being applied are show below. 

Criteria Used –

Incident Created Date is between 01/01/2018 and 30/09/2024 and SYP & crime only filter and Full Offence Title is equal to Attempted - Cruelty to Children/young Persons - Abondoning child under two years. Cruelty to Children/Young Persons - Abondoning child under two years 

Please note –

This data is only where the offence type is recorded in the said Home Office Offence Classes and this may not include details of any other offences that have been recorded in accordance with the Home Office Counting Rules – General Rules - The Principal Crime Rule (1 of 1) - IF THE SEQUENCE OF CRIMES IN AN INCIDENT, OR A COMPLEX CRIME, CONTAINS MORE THAN ONE TYPE OF CRIME, THEN COUNT THE MOST SERIOUS

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 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.