Police are still not recording crime figures as they should

LEICESTERSHIRE Police are failing to accurately record crimes reported to them – including rapes and domestic violence – an official inspection body has said.

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) said the force is not following Home Office rules for recording alleged offences reported to it by victims or professionals such as social workers.

The report, released on Monday, follows the inspectorate’s stinging assessment of “crime data integrity” within Leicestershire Police, following an inspection it carried out in 2017.

That found Leicestershire Police had failed to record approximately 21,000 crimes in a year.

The latest report – which is based on analysis of the force’s handling of 1,662 reports of crime made to it in April, May and June last year – concludes that while it has made some improvements since then, the performance is still rated “inadequate”.

In the sample three months under view, the force did not record 12 reported sexual assaults as having taken place nor a number of reported offences against children, including six allegations of a child being incited by an adult into taking part in sexual activity, the inspection team found.

Also, six allegations of rape and 89 of domestic violence were also not recorded.

HM Inspector of Constabulary Zoë Billingham said: “I am confident that the force is getting back on track and I am optimistic that further improvements will follow in the coming months.

“However, I still found evidence that call handlers, response officers and supervisors are uncertain about when they need to record certain types of crime.

“I do recognise that there has been progress since our last inspection. The force has rolled out a crime recording training programme, and I welcome the introduction of better internal auditing processes.

“Individual officers will get much better feedback to help them understand where they’re going wrong and how to do better.

“But I remain concerned that there is some misunderstanding of the Home Office recording rules.

“It is a credit to the force’s leadership that Leicestershire Police has carried out four of the seven recommendations we made in our last report.

“The force is in a good position to pick up the pace and finish the job it’s started, so we can be sure that every reported offence will be recorded.”

Chief Constable Simon Cole said: “This inspection shows that our overall data integrity compliance rate stands at 84.1 per cent, just behind the national average of 87.7 per cent.

“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 that comes with hundreds of pages of detailed guidance and the outcome of the 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.”

The force has made budget savings and cuts of £38 million and lost more than 500 officers under the Government’s public spending cuts.

Leicestershire Police Federation, which represents rank and file officers, has repeatedly warned that the falling number of officers means its members are buckling under the pressure and the force’s ability to fight crime is diminshed.