Leeds CID Records 1950's

[uncle mick]

Someone on one of the Leeds groups on Facebook found these 1950's records on ebay,should these be in the public domain ?? I've worked out who the fellow is at the bottom of the page by his dob & address\
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http://tinyurl.com/y2fac6qq

[Leodian]

I am surprised that such information is available for sale, particularly because some of the people could still be alive. I wonder how it came to have been put into the public domain? I wonder though if such information can now be found online?

[tilly]

I think you could be right uncle mick its not has though they all could be dead, then you have to think about there familys I have seen mug shots before but they dated from early nineteen hundreds to me these are too recent.

[uncle mick]

I'm giving this post a bump as I know we have a few ex policeman on here & I'd like to know their thoughts

[tyke bhoy]

JMA, Ian Smith?

[jma]

My instinct is that these are confidential documents and as such shouldn't be for sale. The only route I can suggest for anybody who's concerned about this is to notify today's police, rather than yesterday's.

[iansmithofotley]

It looks as though the documents are being sold by a dealer, who deals in books, leaflets, cards and miscellaneous documents. I wonder where he got them from - probably through the trade. I don't know how the current price of £100 has been arrived at, but there again, I am not a wheeler/dealer.

Personally, I think that the documents should have remained confidential, albeit they are quite old. I would have thought that when records were obsolete, after so many years, they would have been incinerated so that things like this could not happen.

[uncle mick]

Thank you for your feedback gents

[jma]

Speaking generally, dealing with confidential documents - of which the police produce stacks - presents a lot of problems including secure storage, weeding and eventual secure destruction. If I had to guess how these documents had come up for sale, I'd take a punt with the closure of an older police station and poor supervision of the clearance of the contents. From what can be seen in the images of these documents, there's hardly a risk to national security, but even after sixty years or whatever, the privacy of the people whose details are included should be protected. There's been a feature on the BBC News website this week with pictures of inmates in a Scottish prison taken in Victorian times. I've no idea at what point somebody's past becomes public history nor the procedure for putting stuff into the public domain. Random sale on eBay may not be the best way.

[uncle mick]

Very strange are "laws" we can't view the the 1921 cencus records till circa 2022 yet I can access the 1939 Register & even electoral rolls till 2010