News

Hampshire police told to keep victims in the loop

By Stephanie Cockroft
January 25, 2012

HAMPSHIRE police need to keep victims more informed of a case’s outcome and should be better at identifying repeat callers, according to an investigation into reports of crime.

An inaugural report by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), which focused on the systems and processes for recording crime, says Hampshire police generally records crimes accurately.

Surrey Police, which is described as having a ‘victim-focussed approach to crime’, almost always records crime accurately, the same report found.

The findings, from Crime scene: A review of police crime and incident reports, looked at the outcome of 120 calls made to each of the 43 police forces in the UK.

This was described as a small sample of the 2,777 and 1,447 calls Hampshire and Surrey police receive respectively every day.

Of the calls made to Hampshire police, investigators found 11 records had been closed without a crime being properly recorded.

At Surrey police, the number for the same category was four.

In the first review of its kind, the report looked at the quality of crime and incident data, as well as the arrangements in place to ensure standards are maintained and improved.

The report looked at incidents reported by the public, which are then converted into crimes, and the use of the ‘no crime’ category, used when police realise during investigations that no offence was committed.

At Surrey police’s headquarters, the report found well-trained staff used a ‘good incident and crime recording systems’, ensuring incidents and crimes were captured correctly and to a good standard.

Chief officers demonstrated strong leadership and reinforced the importance of accurate crime and incident recording, the report says.

It also found the force makes good arrangements with individual victims on how often they will contact and update them, in regards to an ongoing case.

At Hampshire police, the report found staff were ‘clearly committed’ to ensuring crime recording is accurate and of high quality.

Guidance and training has been provided to staff to improve the quality and supervision of investigations, it said.

It also reports that Hampshire police has now introduced a team of staff which focuses on ensuring high standards of investigation and crime recording.

But it said the constabulary needs to ‘develop processes’ to identify repeat and vulnerable callers, such as those who are disabled or elderly, and give them extra support if needed.

Hampshire police’s deputy chief constable Andy Marsh said the force was working to ensure victims are better informed of the outcome of an investigation and reviewing its processes to improve the identification, recording and response to hate crimes, involving disability and repeat victims.

He added: “Our ability to record and investigate crime effectively is important to enable us to catch criminals, protect the public from crime and deliver an excellent service.

“I’m pleased to say therefore that HMIC found we accurately recorded 90 per cent of the crimes and incidents they looked at in this report.

“It means that people logging on to systems such as Crime Reports, for example, to find out what’s happening in their neighbourhood can have confidence in the accuracy of the figures published there.”

In Surrey, police were ‘improving’ their response to initial investigations.

The report recommends staff should take all of the appropriate action for each recorded crime, for instance, by carrying out house-to-house enquiries to identify witnesses.

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