FOI 3443 Missing Children Statistics

I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 13 December 2011. Please find below the response to your request:

1.  How many children under the age of 16 were reported missing to the police in your constabulary area between 6 April 2010 and 5 April 2011?

Reply

Please be advised that the information you have requested is not available in a readily retrievable format. ALL missing reports are initially recorded on the Forces Operational Information System (OIS) but we are not able to establish how many of these involved children without manually reviewing each record. There were 7351 missing reports recorded on OIS during the period stated and each one of these would have to be manually reviewed in order for us to identify the relevant information for your request. Therefore the cost of providing you with the information would be 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.

However, in line with National research, it is believed that between 50-60% of the 7351 figure would involve children under 16yrs.

Please note that West Mercia Police, along with 21 other Forces, uses a Missing Person IT system  called "COMPACT" to record and investigate its missing reports but this is currently only recording 47%  of all  missing reports that are received on OIS. This is because many missing reports are resolved in the first few hours before they are manually recorded onto the "COMPACT" system and there is currently no direct interface between OIS and COMPACT, though the force is exploring this opportunity to improve its data and intelligence capture.

This under-recording is similar to that being experienced by many UK Police Forces and steps are being taken to record all missing person reports from its Command and Control system (OIS) onto the COMPACT system at the point of call from the public.

Having examined "COMPACT" it has been established that:

• There were 3521 missing reports involving all age groups (both adults and children) These 3521 missing reports involved 1774 people.
• There were 1570 reports of missing children (under 16yrs) in the West Mercia Police area during this period. These 1570 reports related to 658 children.

You should note that often one child will go missing many times e.g. one child was reported missing to Police on 48 occasions during this period.

2.  How many children under the age of 16 received a visit from a member of your constabulary following a running away incident, where the purpose of the visit was to check the child was ‘safe and well' and to establish whether they had suffered any harm or abuse between 6 April 2010 and 5 April 2011?

Reply

West Mercia Force Policy in line with ACPO Guidance requires a safe and well check to be completed on all occasions.

Again we are unable to establish from "OIS" how many missing children required safe and well checks.  

From those missing reports recorded on "COMPACT" a found report detailing the outcome of the "safe and well check" was submitted on all 1570 occasions. COMPACT records the details of all harm & abuse outcomes for all missing people.