PBNI Disclosure Log – Response to Request
Request Reference: 305.04.16
Date of Request: 8 June 2016
Date of Response: 4 July 2016
Request
Q1.
In PBNI history of assessing people RoSH (Risk of Serious Harm) how many people have PBNI
assessed as RoSH with a conviction of attempted murder or worse?
Q2.
In PBNI history how many people with a conviction of attempted murder or worse have been
assessed not to pose a RoSH
Q3.
In PBNI history how many people assessed to pose a RoSH with a conviction of attempted
murder or worse received an ECS, ICS, PPS, or DCS. May I have the specific number for each
sentence type.
Q4
In PBNI history how many people were assessed by PBNI to pose a RoSH with a conviction of
attempted murder or worse with no record for violence.
Response
Q1. & Q2. The term Risk of Serious Harm (RoSH) and assessment by PBNI of individuals as such, emanated
from the Criminal Justice (Northern Ireland) Order 2008. PBNI’s records in relation to this specific assessment
date from 1 April 2009.
PBNI cannot define what might be considered, a conviction ‘worse’ than attempted murder but we assumed, for
purposes of this request, that you meant murder.
I can confirm that from 1 April 2009 – 31 March 2016 PBNI has assessed 162 people with a conviction of
attempted murder or murder as a risk of serious harm and 171 people with a conviction of attempted murder or
murder as not posing a risk of serious harm.
Q3. The Criminal Justice (Northern Ireland) Order 2008 made provision for the imposition of indeterminate and
extended sentences (ICS and ECS) for dangerous sexual and violent offenders allowing individuals posing a risk
of serious harm to be detained indefinitely or to the end of their extended sentence. These are considered
public protection sentences.
A determinate custodial sentence (DCS) which is a sentence of imprisonment for a period of time and depending
on the length of the sentence, the first half is served in custody and the second half on licence, became available
following the implementation of the 2008 Order. There is not a separate sentence known as a public protection
sentence (PPS).
From 1 April 2009 – 31 March 2016, in respect of those people with a conviction of attempted murder or murder
whom PBNI has assessed as posing a risk of serious harm, I can confirm that:
7 people received a DCS,
7 people received an ECS and
8 people received an ICS.
This excludes those on other orders for example, Life Licence.
Q4. Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) requires the Probation Board for Northern
Ireland (PBNI), when refusing to provide such information (because the cost of compliance exceeds the
appropriate limit) to provide you with a notice which states that fact.
Section 12 (1) of the FOIA, does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the
authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.
Under FOIA, the statutory cost limit for PBNI is £450 (this equates to approximately 18 hours work at £25 per
hour). Further information on fees can be found in the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate
Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004. See www.legislation.gov.uk
As indicated in my acknowledgement I have interpreted your reference in your request to ‘no record for violence’
as meaning no ‘previous’ record for violence.
I had previously confirmed that PBNI will only hold limited information on previous convictions insofar as this
information may be relevant to inform an individual’s Pre-Sentence Report (PSR) and given the number of
reports prepared annually, it was unlikely that we would be able to provide this information.
PBNI prepares between 5000 and 7000 reports annually for court. This is approximately 500 reports in any given
month.
In order to answer this specific question, PBNI would have to review each individual PSR held to determine
whether they contain any reference to a previous conviction for violence. PSRs are held on PBNI’s Probation
Information Management system (PIMS). This is not an electronic document record system so there is no central
mechanism for finding and indexing data to this degree.
PBNI, allowing a conservative estimate of 15 minutes per report, considers that the cost to retrieve and extract
this information (even for 1 month) would exceed the statutory cost limit as the information is not in an easily
retrievable format.
In accordance with Section 17 of the FOIA, PBNI is notifying you of its decision to refuse the information under
Section 12 of the FOIA, because compliance would exceed the appropriate cost limit and place an unreasonable
burden on PBNI resources.
If you have any queries about this letter, or if you feel I have misinterpreted your request please contact me.
Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future communications.
If you are unhappy with the way PBNI has handled your request, you may ask for an internal review using our
complaints procedure. A copy of our complaints procedure is available on our website www.pbni.org.uk.
If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you have the right to apply directly to the
Information Commissioner for a decision.
The Information Commissioner can be contacted at: Information Commissioner’s Office,
Wycliffe House,
Water Lane,
Wilmslow,
Cheshire,
SK9 5AF.
Please note that PBNI publishes responses to requests for information on its website where we believe there
may be a wider public interest. If requests are published they are anonymised i.e. details of the requester are not
published.