FOI 15372-25 - Suicides by Ethnicity

Request:

a) The number of suspected suicides and attempted suicides by ethnicity for the period 2000-2025.

b) A copy of the ethnicity dataset/codes used in such data recording 

Response:

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

• states that fact,
• specifies the exemption in question and
• states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption

The exemption applicable to the information requested is:

Section 12(1) – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit

The information you are requesting is not held by Northamptonshire Police in any reasonably retrievable form. The only means of establishing information of the nature you are requesting would be by way of manual examination of each incident record. Our information retrieval process generally relies on a computer-run report which captures any information recorded upon the surface of a record or within specified fields. Where relevant information is held deeper in the record, or outside of a specified field, a manual assessment is usually required to retrieve that information. There is no mandatory field in which to record attempted suicide, therefore a manual review of the free text of all potentially relevant incidents would be required to establish whether it relates to an attempted suicide. At a minimum, this would include incidents categorised as “Concern for Safety” and “Mental Health”.

It is my assessment that the cost of providing you with the information requested would exceed the 'appropriate level' as set out in the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.

Between January 2021 and July 2025, Northamptonshire Police recorded 151710 “Concern for Safety” incidents. This time period and category alone takes the request over the ‘appropriate limit’.

To manually examine these records would cost 151710 (number of records) x 3 minutes each (minimum) = over 7585 hours at £25 per hour to respond to your request, which exceeds the appropriate limit (currently £450 for 'prescribed costs'). The full cost of answering your request would be even higher, as a larger number of incident records would need to be searched.

In view of the above, and in accordance with the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, please take this letter as a Refusal Notice.

You may wish to refine and resubmit your request so that it reduces the costs shown above and is then within the 'appropriate limit' shown above. I cannot think of a means to refine the request in order to provide the information you are seeking, but if you would like some further information about how to proceed with your request then please contact:

[email protected]

Due to the different methods of recording information across forces, a specific response from one constabulary should not be seen as an indication of what information could be supplied (within cost) by another. Systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data. For this reason, responses between forces may differ, and should not be used for comparative purposes.

Although excess cost removes the Force’s obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill, I have supplied information relevant to your request which was retrieved or available before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded. I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of your request.

Due to a change of systems, the earliest information Northamptonshire Police hold for this request is March 2016.

a) Search for occurrences from March 2016 to August 2025 inclusive, where deaths were recorded as Self-inflicted.

b) Ethnicity codes used:

1. Unknown
2. White - North European
3. White - South European
4. Black
5. Asian
6. Chinese, Japanese, SE Asian
7. Middle Eastern

Recorded ethnicity is officer-defined. This means that there may be inaccuracies in the ethnicity recorded.

It is for a coroner, rather than the police, to determine the cause of a sudden death, which includes suicides. A death being recorded as “self-inflicted” in Northamptonshire Police’s systems does not guarantee that it was deemed a suicide. Therefore, you may wish to also request this information from the coroner.

The numerical data presented in this response is an un-audited snapshot of un-published data sourced from "live" systems and is subject to the interpretation of the original request by the individual extracting the data.

Northamptonshire Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not for the production of statistical information for Freedom of Information responses.

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 for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when the data is used.

If you decide to write an article/use the enclosed data, we ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.