How we look after your information - a guide for children and young people
Introduction
This is our Privacy Notice. It tells you how we use your personal data and what your rights are. Rights are special rules that help keep everyone safe. When people give us your personal data, we have to look after it carefully. This Privacy Notice explains how we do that and what happens with it.
Sometimes you’ll see underlined words - those are links that take you to other pages. If you’re not sure what something means, it’s okay to ask an adult you trust (like a parent, carer or teacher) to help so it’s less confusing.
Who are we?
We are the Crown Prosecution Service or CPS for short.
Our job is to help bring people to court if they break the law in England or Wales. This means that if someone breaks the law, the police might arrest them. Then we look at the evidence and decide if they should go to court. Evidence can be facts including what people say about what happened, objects or other documents.
In court, we explain what happened and show the evidence, and then a jury can decide if they are guilty of doing the crime or not.
Personal data? What’s that?
Personal data is any information that can be used to tell who you are. This could be things like:
- Your name
- Your photograph
- Your address
- Your email address or phone number.
There are some types of data that we have to be extra careful with. We call this special category data. This might be:
- Data about your health like an illness you have,
- Your religion,
- If you’ve ever broken the law and what you did.
We use a lot of personal data to do our job. If you want to see everything we use, there is a full list on our Privacy Notice for Adults - you can just click the link to read it.
Why do you need my personal data?
We need personal data to do our job and help bring people to court when they break the law.
If you broke the law or saw someone else break the law, we will need your personal data to look into this.
If something bad happened to you because someone broke the law, you might be called a victim. A victim is someone who is harmed or injured because of a crime. We might need your personal data if you are a victim and share this with the court.
Can you use my personal data for anything?
No. Just because we have your personal data, it doesn’t mean we can do whatever we want with it.
We have to follow important rules to look after it. These rules are laws which say how we can and can’t use your data. They are there to help protect your data and your privacy and to make sure you are treated fairly.
If you want to read more about these laws, you can look at our Privacy Notice for Adults.
Do I have a say in what happens to my personal data?
We use your personal data to help take people who break the law to court. This helps keep everyone safe and makes the world fairer. That’s why we have special rules to protect your personal data.
Sometimes, we have to keep your personal data even if you’d rather we didn’t. That is because it’s part of a case and helps us to do our job.
Can I see my personal data that you hold?
Yes. The law says you can ask to see the personal data we have about you. This is called a right of access request.
If you want to see the personal data we have about you, it’s okay to ask an adult or person you trust (parent, carer or teacher) to help you contact our team.
Their email address is: [email protected]
Their address for letters is: Information Access Team, Crown Prosecution Service, 102 Petty France, Westminster, London, SW1H 9EA.
You also have some other rights under the law about your personal data. These are explained on the Privacy Notice for Adults.
These can be hard to understand, so you might want to get an adult to explain these rights to you to help you understand them.
Can anyone else see my personal data?
Sometimes, yes, but only if it helps us to do our job. We’re very careful about how we do this.
For example, if you saw someone do something bad, you might be called a witness. Witnesses are people who tell the court what they saw when something bad happened. If you are a witness, we might need to share your personal data with the court.
But don’t worry, we’re very careful with your personal data and make sure it’s kept safe by following the rules.
Do you keep my personal data forever?
No. We only keep your personal data for as long as we need it, which can be several years.
We follow special rules that tell us on how long we can keep personal data for and when it should be deleted. This is called a retention policy.
Do you use AI?
You may have heard of AI, which stands for artificial intelligence. It can be quite complicated, but it is basically where computers can help people to do tasks and create things.
AI needs to be used carefully and only when it is right to do so. Sometimes, AI is used in the CPS to help with tasks, but never to make big decisions.
A person always checks the work where AI has been used to make sure it is correct.
Who makes sure you follow all the rules?
We have someone in the CPS called our Data Protection Officer.
Their job is to protect your data and to check we are following all the all the rules and keeping your personal data safe. If they see something wrong, they help us to fix it.
Because of how important it is to keep your data safe, and follow all the rules, if you’re ever worried, you can email or write a letter to our Data Protection Officer.
Their email address is: [email protected]
Their address for letters is: Crown Prosecution Service, 102 Petty France, 8th Floor, Westminster, London, SW1H 9EA.
There are also other people whose job it is to make sure we follow the rules about keeping personal data safe and not using it in the wrong way. They are called the Information Commissioner’s Office or ICO for short.
If we don’t follow the rules, they can tell us off.
You can email or send a letter to them too: Their email address is: [email protected]. Their address for letters is: Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.