In May 2017, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) conducted a crime data integrity inspection of Leicestershire Police. The 2017 report made recommendations and areas for improvement aimed at improving crime recording in Leicestershire Police.
A subsequent re-inspection, completed in October 2018, assessed the progress made since that report. The findings of that report can be found here
Lord Willy Bach said: “I’m aware that a lot of resources have been invested in improving the recording processes and I’m pleased that the reports recognises the significant progress that has been made in a short time frame.
“There is clearly more to be done and I will continue to monitor work in this area as the force aims to make further improvements. However, it’s reasonable to expect that, as everyone gets used to new processes that are now in place, they will build upon the encouraging progress that has been made so far.”
Chief Constable Simon Cole said: “This inspection shows that our overall data integrity compliance rate stands at 84.1%, just behind the national average of 87.7%.
“This is an improvement on last year’s results and an area of business we continue to work on, something which has been rightly acknowledged in the latest report which praises our leadership work and found that victims are placed ‘at the forefront of crime-recording decisions’.
“We have a rolling plan on how we want to further improve our crime recording, we have introduced new processes, revamped our training and are closely monitoring the progress.
“However, crime recording is a complex issue and this inspection looks at our technical compliance with a national crime recording system – something which is focused on numbers, categories, how crimes are manually logged on systems and then audited.
“It is an area of business that comes with hundreds of pages of detailed guidance and outcome of the recent inspection isn’t a reflection of the level of investigation into any given crime, personal integrity or how officers and staff liaise with victims, and nor should it be interpreted as such.
“It is about our administrative processes and computer systems and there are aspects of the inspection that we regularly challenge.
“And while we do aim to make further improvements to our audit processes, crime continues to increase nationally and the balancing act on where resources are deployed continues every day and changes every minute. This is a constant challenge. We now have 12 officers and staff supporting this process, where in the past we had 3. That is a balancing act in a world of finite resources.”
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Posted on Tuesday 15th January 2019