Police Recorded Crime Statistics

Debate between Lindsay Roy and Bernard Jenkin

Thursday 16th October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Jenkin]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is worth emphasising that under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, PC Patrick should have been afforded some protection. I will come to the position of whistleblowers later in my remarks.

Our report, which was published this April, draws on evidence that we took under full parliamentary privilege from James Patrick. However, that was by no means the only evidence on which our conclusions relied. Our witnesses included Paul Ford, secretary of the Police Federation National Detective Forum; Dr Rodger Patrick—no relation—a former chief inspector at West Midlands police; and Peter Barron, a former detective chief superintendent at the Metropolitan police. They all fully corroborated Mr Patrick’s analysis. We heard about the various techniques that have crept into the culture of policing to help police meet crime reduction targets, leading to the corruption of police recorded crime statistics, so that they are less meaningful than they should be.

Those techniques include cuffing, in which multiple incidents are recorded as a single crime, and crimes such as burglary being recorded as less serious offences, such as theft or criminal damage. James Patrick also told us about nodding—offenders admitting to a number of offences in exchange for being charged with a less serious crime and getting a lighter sentence. There is also skewing, which is when more resources are put into the specific areas measured by performance indicators at the expense of other work.

All those techniques are designed to make constabularies look as though they are doing a better job than they actually are, as became evident after a sharper fall in crime was recorded by the police than in the crime survey for England and Wales. It was a statistical indicator that had already raised eyebrows in the UK Statistics Authority. Such things are done to improve individual officers’ job performance appraisals, promotion prospects and, ultimately, salaries.

We also heard about the terrible effect of such practices on the effectiveness of the police. It fails the victims of crime, because the crimes that they have attempted to report are not attended to. It results in the misallocation of police resources, because under-recorded crimes become neglected. Indeed, Mr Patrick believes that it contributed to the Metropolitan police’s failure to contain the London riots three years ago, because the new shift systems established by the Metropolitan police were based on a false understanding of crime patterns across London drawn from police recorded crime statistics. This adds up to a lack of trust, and raises questions about police leadership that must seriously affect police effectiveness.

We also took evidence from police and crime commissioners, such as our own from Essex, Nick Alston, who warned, in my view wisely, that however much police may think they have taken action to address the problems, ingrained attitudes and behaviour can have a long tail and take a long time to change. We also heard from academics Professor Stephen Shute and Professor Mike Hough of the Crime Statistics Advisory Committee, who told us:

“Lack of leadership results in decay in the recording systems.”

They said that there was

“no doubt that there has been dishonest manipulation at one end, through wilful blindness, to misunderstanding and ignorance, to the inappropriate exercise of discretion within a complicated set of rules.”

The Committee found that police recorded crime statistics were unreliable and inaccurate. Lax supervision of recorded crime data meant that police were failing in their core role of protecting the public and preventing crime. This is not just about inaccurate numbers; it is about the long crisis of values and ethics at the heart of our national police force. The poor data integrity that we found reflects the poor quality of leadership within the police. Whether the police comply with the core values of policing, including accountability, honesty and integrity, will determine whether the proper quality of police recorded crime data can be restored. I emphasise that there is much evidence that action is now being taken on that.

We found strong evidence that the police have under-recorded crime, particularly sexual crime such as rape, in many police areas. There remain wide disparities in no-crime rates—that is, where police decide that a crime did not take place—following reports of rape, for example. In January 2014, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, on behalf of the Rape Monitoring Group, released a compendium of statistics on recorded rapes in each force over the previous five years. I invite right hon. and hon. Friends and colleagues to look at the table showing how wide the variation is among different forces across England and Wales in their no-criming of rape. According to the figures, in Lincolnshire, for example, 26% of all reported rapes were no crimed in 2012-13; by contrast, in Merseyside, only 4% were. The national average was 11.9%.

The main reason for misrecording was the continued prevalence of numerical targets, which create perverse incentives to misrecord crime. A police officer is presented with a conflict. Does he or she record attempted burglary, or downgrade it to criminal damage in order to achieve the target? That creates conflict between the achievement of targets and core policing values. We deprecate the use of targets in the strongest possible terms, because most police forces are still in denial about the damage targets cause, both to data integrity and to standards of behaviour. We found an amazing disparity of attitude towards targets across police and crime commissioners and among chief constables. Our official police witnesses, most notably the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, were somewhat defensive and seemed unready to acknowledge that their statistics were inherently flawed. Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe told us that the accuracy of data on rape and sexual offences was

“a lot better than it was, if we took it back five to 10 years.”

However, he did not think that it was entirely reliable and agreed that there was cause for concern.

The UK Statistics Authority has overall responsibility for the assessment of the quality of Government statistics. It designates a reliable series of statistics as national statistics only if they are good enough. As a result of the Public Administration Committee’s inquiry, shortly before the chair of the UK Statistics Authority appeared before us to give evidence on police recorded crime, it stripped police recorded crime data of the quality kitemark of national statistics. What our inquiry had already exposed demonstrated that the numbers produced by polices forces were simply not good enough to rely on. The Home Office, the Office for National Statistics and the UK Statistics Authority had all been far too passive in addressing the problem, even though they had all known about it for years.

[Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Chairman of the Public Administration Committee on his tremendous work in taking the matter forward and on securing today’s debate. How serious is the decision to remove the kitemark of national statistics from the police recorded crime statistics?

[Mr Jenkin]

It simply means that the raw data, on the basis of which so many decisions about the allocation of police manpower and resources are made, are of questionable accuracy. That cannot be a good thing. It also means that we found that there is a culture and attitude and ingrained behaviours that are in conflict with how we expect our police to behave and how the vast majority do aspire to behave. That is what we must address. A leadership model based on targets is a major cause of the problem and is flawed. I have been told anecdotally that there is a generation of “target junkies” in our police forces who have been brought up on and believe in targets and will find it difficult to move away from them. However, that is the cultural and attitudinal change that police leaders must bring about.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lindsay Roy]

Does the hon. Gentleman believe, as I do, that things have to go beyond audit to a more qualitative assessment of progress? There should not simply be a tick-box mentality.

[Mr Jenkin]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman, but the importance of audit is that it provides the data with which to challenge what is going on. Otherwise, the only option is to accept the figures given.

Scrutiny from the police and crime commissioner in Essex has been instrumental in encouraging the positive progress in the county. Nick Alston has supported Chief Constable Kavanagh and the independent inspection by HMIC, which means that the people of Essex can have a high level of confidence in the figures for police-recorded crime in Essex. The process, however, is ongoing. We must embed a culture in all our police forces based not on chasing figures but on the core tasks of policing: protecting people from harm, bringing criminals to justice and keeping our communities safe.

The Government have accepted some of our recommendations, but they have rejected our recommendation that the Home Office

“takes active primary operational responsibility and accepts accountability for ensuring the integrity of the data which it collates, validates and submits to the ONS for publication.”

The Government argue:

“It is for chief constables to ensure the quality of crime recording in their force area, and for PCCs to hold them to account.”

The Government also reject our recommendation that the UKSA should hold the Home Office to account, and instead argue that

“it is the responsibility of chief constables to ensure the quality of crime recording in their force, and for PCCs to hold chief constables to account.”

Nor are the Government taking up our recommendation that HMIC should set a minimum suitable rank for force crime registrars—something that we believe is necessary to ensure that they have sufficient authority within their force and direct access to their chief constables.

One reason why all the problems with crime statistics have developed is that no one appears ready to accept responsibility for the quality of police recorded crime statistics. Although the Government accept and welcome our report and its conclusions, they do not yet seem to be willing to address the fundamental questions of leadership nor to accept responsibility and be accountable.

I accept that the Government are addressing the leadership question through the College of Policing, but in the end it is Ministers who must take ultimate responsibility. In reality, the very fact that the Minister is sitting here shows that he is doing so; I only wish the Government would admit it. I am pleased that the Government’s response to our report has recommended that various agencies take action, but that will never absolve Ministers if we find further problems. Our system works by making Ministers accountable, and if there is not a measurable improvement, the PASC will hold Ministers to account.

Public Administration Select Committee

Debate between Lindsay Roy and Bernard Jenkin

Thursday 10th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jenkin]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments.

[Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)]

As a member of the PASC, may I, too, congratulate the Chair of the Select Committee on his effective leadership and tenacity in this inquiry? Will he explain to the House why the flaws in the recording system were not picked up through external inspection?

[Mr Jenkin]

In our evidence, we heard that there was not enough internal or external inspection. When Kent police were specially audited a year or two ago, it turned out that there was substantial manipulation of crime statistics. Whether it was advertent or inadvertent, it was happening. The result has been a much cleaner bill of health for Kent. Regular audit and inspection is one of the things that must happen, and HMIC must make that a priority every year.