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Evidence suggests that the staff of the National Offender Management Service are carefully selected for their creative and imaginative (perhaps even escapist?) thought processes, a trait to be spotted from time to time in their handling of freedom of information inquiries.

Last October the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ asked NOMS for some information on Operation Safeguard, the scheme in which police cells have been used to hold prisoners in response to prison overcrowding. NOMS replied that it was considering whether it was in the public interest to release material, because of the exemption to protect law enforcement.

Every few weeks since then it sent us another letter saying that it needed additional time, as assessing the public interest test on whether or not to release anything was taking longer than anticipated. The Service said it was applying the test in relation to whether disclosure would harm security and good order in prisons. It explained that the repeated delay was because 'there are so many options to consider'.

That is until last month, when NOMS (now part of the Justice Ministry) finally and surprisingly informed us that 'after an extensive search, I regret to inform you that the Ministry of Justice does not hold the information that you have requested'.

Which raises the question as to how they have managed to spend nearly a year thinking about whether it would harm prison security to release non-existent information.

Possibly NOMS has acquired a new public service function, of providing philosophers with new case material for the study of some of the trickier .

As , 'Whether or not there are non-existent objects seems to be one of the more mysterious and speculative issues in ontology.' Personally I also find the possible existence of non-existent documents one of the more mysterious issues in freedom of information.

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