Britain’s ‘FBI’ leaves 20 years of vital evidence to gather dust
MOUNTAINS of evidence that could solve serious crimes such as murder and rape is gathering dust in the offices of Britain’s FBI.
Policing inspectors uncovered a backlog of up to 8,000 cases – some 20 years old – that have yet to be added to a crucial database by the National Crime Agency.
They also found 280 crates full of photographs of injuries that had not been analysed.
It is feared that the NCA’s failure to keep on top of its records could mean crime patterns are being missed and that serial offenders may be escaping justice.
The agency was created by Theresa May in 2013 to tackle crime gangs, child exploitation, cyber crime and fraud.
But i t was soon dubbed the National Chaos Agency as a string of directors quit, judges criticised it for errors in court cases, and officers struggled to use its outdated computer equipment.
The FDA civil service union says morale is low among NCA staff, mainly due to them earning less than their counterparts in police forces and security services.
Now HM Inspectorate of Constabulary has revealed that it has ‘ significant concerns’ over the backlog of serious cases.
The NCA’s serious crime analysis section ‘has a national responsibility’ to gather case files from local forces to ‘look for behavioural similarities between offences, which may indicate they have been committed by the same person’.
But HMIC found Britain’s crimefighters are failing to keep pace.
They identified 906 recent cases that met the criteria to be considered by the analysis section, but had not even been sent to the NCA by forces around Britain. This was on top of another 4,176 crimes, dating back to 1998, that had not been sent to the NCA.
There was an even bigger, and growing, backlog of cases that had been sent to the NCA but not added to the database or analysed.
HMIC found ‘7,834 cases awaiting the input of detailed information’ – and even among those that
‘Backlogs hide links to unsolved crimes’
had made it on to the system, 4,265 awaited analysis.
Its report said: ‘The backlog of cases could provide investigative links if they were added. All the time they remain in a backlog, the risk is that links to unsolved crimes cannot be made.
‘To clear all the cases… and deal with the backlog would probably need 20 more assistant crime analysts and would take five years.’ It said ‘concerted action’ was vital.
Separately, the NCA maintains a ‘national injuries database’, offering detectives the possibility of spotting similarities.
HMIC said there were 280 crates holding case papers and photographs ‘that had still to be reviewed and uploaded’. It added that a rough estimate by the team suggests there may be 3,000 to 8,000 images going back to 1978.
Last night victims rights’ campaigner Harry Fletcher said: ‘The lack of action again shows victims are at the margins of the criminal justice system. It also strongly suggests the police no longer have the resources they need to do their job properly.’
A spokesman for the NCA said: ‘We are looking at the report and will respond formally to HMIC. But work is ongoing and progress has been made towards meeting these requirements.’