8
May
2014
By Calvin at 13:53 GMT, 12 years ago
Many of you will have seen news reports last week concerning the publication of HMIC’s interim report on crime recording by the police, which was published on 1 May 2014.
This interim report, entitled Crime recording: A matter of fact – interim report looks at the way the 43 police forces in England and Wales record crime data. The inspection was carried out between February and August 2014, and is the most extensive of its kind that HMIC has ever undertaken into crime data integrity.
The summary begins on page 12 and makes for some uncomfortable reading, suggesting that of the police services thus far inspected 20% of crimes may be going unrecorded. The report goes onto say that this under -recording may have some severe consequences for victims and the community.
However, the summary does make a point of stating that not all is bad and informs the reader that there are also strengths in the system of police-recorded crime, which is explained in Section 6 of the report.
The final report will be published in October
TCPW Comment: Under-recording also has implications for crime prevention activity, which often relies upon geographical and temporal crime pattern analysis of recorded crime and so it’s a good thing that this work is being undertaken.
The full report can be read at this link: http://www.hmic.gov.uk/publication/crime-recording-a-matter-of-fact-interim-report/
