FOI 0888-2025/26- False allegations of rape

Request:

Please provide the following information for each of the past ten calendar years (2016–2025 inclusive, or the most recent years for which data is held):

Q1. The number of women investigated by your force for making a false allegation of rape, where the suspected offence was perverting the course of justice (or wasting police time).

Q2. The number of women charged with perverting the course of justice (or wasting police time, if relevant) in relation to allegedly false rape allegations.

Q3. The number of resulting prosecutions for these offences.

Q4. For each prosecution, please provide the outcome (guilty, not guilty, charges dropped/no further action)

Q5. For each conviction, please provide:

- The sentence imposed (e.g. custodial, suspended, community order)

- The length of any custodial sentence.

If possible, please provide this data in an annual breakdown.

Response:

Extent of Searches to Locate Information

Following receipt of your request searches were conducted within North Yorkshire Police to locate relevant information. 

Decision

I am not obliged to provide you with a response to your request pursuant to Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act). Please note that when one part of your request falls under Section 12, we are not obliged to review the rest of the questions and the whole request is therefore exempt.

Section 12(1) applies to your request as the cost of complying with your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of identifying and retrieving any relevant information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.

Due to the nature of our recording systems the information requested, if held, is not in an easily retrievable format. Our information retrieval process generally relies on a computer ran 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 required to retrieve that information.

As there is no specific offence for false allegation of rape as well as so specific outcome such as someone may be give words of advice, in order to retrieve the requested information, it would be necessary to manually review all rape crimes for the timeframe requested to establish if any were related to false allegations. This manual process would mean reading through thousands of records which would exceed the time limit allowed under the Act. 

Pursuant to Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act this letter acts as a Refusal Notice.

Pursuant to Section 16 of the Act I am required to offer you advice and assistance with regarding to refining your request to within the ‘appropriate limit’ (time/cost limit). However, we may be able to provide the number of specifically relating to Attempting to pervert the course of public justice crimes however these would then need to be manually reviewed to establish if they related to rape crimes. Also this would not count for other outcomes such as words of advice given. If you wish to discuss this please do not hesitate to contact me.

Please note that systems used for recording information are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data.  It should be noted therefore that this force’s response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other responses you may receive.