Thousands of reported crimes are left unrecorded by the police

POLICE forces are failing to record thousands of crimes, including harassment, stalking and coercive behaviour, a watchdog has found.

New figures show a gap between the number of incidents that are reported and the number of incidents that are then logged appropriately.

West Mercia Police is not taking down the details of more than 8,900 reported crimes each year, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services said. This equates to just under 10 per cent of the 86,799 crimes reported to the force not being recorded, according to a report.

It is also failing to record more than 4,200 reports of violent crime a year, around 12 per cent of all reported.

While inspectors said the force had made improvements, it was told to immediately improve how it records violent crimes, particularly harassment, stalking, coercive and controlling behaviour and domestic abuse as well as modern slavery.

Inspector of Constabulary Wendy Williams said of West Mercia: “It is incredibly important that police forces get crime recording right.

“Doing so improves the effectiveness of investigations and makes it all the more likely that victims will receive justice.

“While there are still some concerns, victims of crime can be more confident than ever that their crimes will be recorded in a proper manner.”

In Essex, police are failing to record around 6,700 crimes each year, with 2,500 reports of violence not being properly tracked.

Inspectors said the force had made “excellent progress” in recording crime since 2014 and it expects the improvements to continue.

Pippa Mills, Essex Police’s deputy chief constable, said: “We will build on this promising result and ensure that we do everything we can to protect victims by recording crimes accurately.

“I am really pleased that the vast majority of crimes recorded on our system are recorded correctly, and this is down to a great deal of hard work from both officers and police staff.”

The police watchdog reviewed how four forces – Essex, West Mercia, North Yorkshire and Warwickshire – record crime data and published reports on the performance of each one.

North Yorkshire Police has shown “impressive levels of improvement” while Warwickshire has got better over the last five years.

In North Yorkshire, the report found that the force recorded 92.8 per cent of crimes.

It was estimated that this means the force is recording an additional 6,100 reported crimes each year because of its improved crime recording arrangements. This is a statistically significant improvement of 12.7 percentage points. Last year, the same inspectorate found that Scotland Yard is failing to record almost 100,000 crimes each year, including violent offences and domestic abuse.

While acknowledging that the country’s biggest force had made improvements, the watchdog said around 10 per cent of all crimes were still not being recorded properly by officers.

Inspectors said problems had been identified in the areas of violent crime and domestic abuse, public order, theft and damage against property offences.