Consent to Prosecute Information

Dear Crown Law Office,

I would like to request some statistics and information from you
under the Official Information Act. As I understand there are a
number of criminal charges where consent needs to be obtained from
the Attorney-General to prosecute, and that in effect most
decisions on these things are really made by the Solicitor-General
rather than the Attorney-General under s9A of the Constitution Act,
so I figured the best place to come for some statistics about these
charges would be Crown Law. This is especially true given that the
Attorney-General doesn't fall under the scope of the OIA.

1) I was hoping that you could provide me with some statistics of
how often consent to lay charges has been given for "consent to
prosecute" crimes, along with a tally of how often consent has been
refused, broken down by the particular criminal charge.

As for the term for which I wish to request statistics for, I am
unsure of the amount of data or the ease of access to statistics
that there would be. If it is only a small amount of charges, or
statistics are relatively easy to access, then may I ask for as far
back as practical, as it would be interesting to see if there are
any emerging trends. If statistics are hard to access and there is
a large amount of data, then may I ask for the information for
2011?

2) I am guessing that consent being denied to prosecute would be
rather rare, so may I also please request any correspondence,
emails, reports, or other information that would help explain the
reason why consent was declined for the last three cases in which
this occurred?

3) If any policies or processes are followed to determine whether
consent to prosecute should be given, can I please request a copy
of any documents that illuminate how this process works?

Although not required by the Act, I understand it is often helpful
to explain the purpose for a request. I am a law student, and the
concept of these type of charges and how they work interests me, so
I am really just doing this for my own interest

Feel free to contact me if you wish me to clarify my request.

Yours faithfully,

Joshua Grainger