18
Nov
2014
By Calvin at 10:22 GMT, 9 years ago
The police are today being further criticised about the way they are recording crime. I covered this story a while back when the HMIC published its interim report into crime recording, so this news should not come as a surprise and many police services have now changed their recording practices in line with HMIC’s requirements.
The following points taken from the rather long summary in the report are the ones hitting the headlines this morning:
- The police are failing to record a large proportion of the crimes reported to them. Over 800,000 crimes reported to the police have gone unrecorded each year an under- recording of 19 percent
- Even when crimes are correctly recorded, too many are removed or cancelled as recorded crimes for no good reason. Of the 3,246 decisions to cancel, or no-crime a crime record that we reviewed, 664 were incorrect. These included over 200 rapes and more than 250 crimes of violence against the person.
- In over 800 of the 3,246 decisions we reviewed, we could find no evidence that the victim was told of the decision to no-crime their report.
- We were reassured to find little evidence of the misclassification of crime. Our audit showed that 96 percent of crime records reviewed were classified correctly, either at the time of initial recording or subsequently
- In appropriate cases, those offenders who are brought to justice can be punished by means of an out-of-court disposal; 3,842 of these disposals were checked. To be correctly applied and recorded, the disposal must be appropriate for the offender and the views of the victim taken into consideration. We found nearly 500 cases where the offender, owing to their previous record, was not suitable for the sanction applied and should have received one which was more severe. Evidence that the victims’ wishes were properly considered was only found in 1,309 cases out of the 2,144 where there was a victim.
TCPW Comment With 19 percent of crimes going unrecorded we should not be surprised if we see some increases in police recorded crime in some categories over the following months. It won’t really be crime going up of course; it’ll be a more accurate count of what’s being reported to the police. The independent crime survey conducted for England and Wales still shows most crime categories falling, which is at least some good news for us to think about. It’s also important for us to understand that a huge amount of crime goes unreported to the police as well, which is what the crime survey for England and Wales attempts to uncover, at least for household crime, but even this measure has been criticised as being inaccurate by many criminologists!
HMIC Report: Crime Recording: Making the Victim Count: http://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmic/wp-content/uploads/crime-recording-making-the-victim-count.pdf
