Implications of adopting the national crime recording standard

Report: 7
Date: 6 December 2001
By: Commissioner

Summary

The National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) has been developed through ACPO for the purpose of addressing both regional variation in crime recording and to take a more victim focused approach to recording crime. ACPO Chief Constables' Council has agreed introduction of the standard across all 43 police services in England and Wales by April 2002. This report seeks to appraise the Finance, Planning and Best Value Committee (FPBV) and subsequently the Full Authority, of the implications of implementation within the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), in terms of resource abstraction and associated opportunity costs, within an anticipated range of increase of between 10% and 20% in the level of recorded crime.

A. Recommendations

That Members note the contents of this report.

B. Supporting information

Introduction

1. Following the publication of HMIC's "On the Record" and the proposals within the Home Office Review of Crime Statistics in July 2000 ACPO Chief Constable's Council agreed to introduce the National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) across all forty-three police services in England and Wales. The standard has two main aims:

• To move the crime counts for the forty-three services of England and Wales onto a more consistent national basis and
• To take a more victim-centred approach to crime recording.

2. The standard advocates neither a purely prima facie or evidential approach to the recording of crime, concentrating instead on a victim- focused standard to capture a higher, more accurate, level of crime allegations. It is not the intention of the standard to mirror the British Crime Survey results, but rather to concentrate on a truer crime picture by force area to complement those results.

The ACPO and MPS view

3. NCRS has thus been developed to support a consistent national approach to crime recording. Relative crime levels are now a core part of the Government's performance framework and are enshrined in new developments within the MPS, such as the new inspection processes for Borough Command Units. NCRS will ensure that when such benchmarking comparisons are made, the crime figures used are truly comparable and that the resulting assessments have validity.

4. All police services in England and Wales are committed to delivery of the standard from April 2002. Management Board supports the adoption of NCRS and receives monthly update on progress from Christine Jones the project director.

5. NCRS is a developing set of core principles, which will continue to evolve through the National Crime Recording Standards Sub Group, at which the NCRS project manager represents the interests of the MPS.

Current crime recording practice

6. The MPS Inspectorate carried out an inspection on the slippage between criminal activities reported on the Command and Control Computer Aided Despatch (CAD), as compared with recorded crime on the Crime Reporting and Information System (CRIS). This work revealed a crime-recording rate for the MPS of 84.7%, substantially higher than the average 76% for the eleven police services inspected by HMIC. There is, however, substantial slippage between CAD and CRIS recording and removing or reducing this slippage, which is a possible consequence of the introduction of NCRS, could increase the number of total notifiable offences by 11%. This will lead to an increase of over 107,000 recorded crimes.

7. A small number of police services have already adopted the new standards, and report rises in recorded crime within an average range of 10% to 20%. Therefore, opportunity costs and resource abstraction within the MPS has been worked up on the basis of this range of variation.

Implications for front line resources

8. The MPS differs significantly from most other police services in the manner in which crime is recorded; front line response officers are responsible for the initial investigation and initial entry of crime onto the CRIS database.

9. Most other forces have adopted primary 'paper' crime recording systems, with input onto secondary crime databases by permanent crime inputting staff. It is therefore likely that the cost to the MPS in terms of abstracting front line officers to record crime may be greater than that experienced by other police services.

Costs and abstractions

10. The average time taken to input an initial entry of crime onto the database is 23.5 minutes. Basing costing data on this information, which does not include travelling time or other associated abstraction, the average cost of an initial crime entry is £19.80.

11. The Crime Management Best Value Review (CMBVR) reckoned crime recording costs in terms of initial entry plus travelling and opportunity costs around the double crewing of police vehicles. This enables a current estimate of crime recording costs for this year of £27.5m. Assuming the effect of NCRS to be an increase of between 10% and 20%, the following estimates can be made:

12. A further way of demonstrating this effect is that a 10% increase in crime recording amounts to an additional 80,000 hours or 3333 days of police resource time.

Project costs

13. The NCRS has one DCI employed to manage the project full time, including development and implementation of the project plan. There is no project team or administrative support. The project board, led by Commander Hagon, and the working group led by Chief Superintendent Bennett, are seconded to deliver pieces of work as required by the project plan. Costs in terms of the management of the project have therefore been kept to a minimum.

14. The NCRS delivery plan is currently being developed in terms of training need analysis through consultation and involvement with MPS training specialists. Costing for this area of the project has not yet been worked up. This area is to be reported to the next Management Board.

Target setting and performance monitoring

15. Unpublished Home Office research indicates that most of the increases in reported offences will occur at the lower level of the seriousness scale. The crimes most affected by the new standard, and which are more likely to affect a police service crime statistics in significant numbers, are as follows:

• Common Assault (1,530 additional crimes in five police services)
• Harassment (830)
• Racially aggravated Harassment (1350, however this is confused with the general desire to increase reporting and recording of these crimes)
• Vehicle interference and tampering (1450)
• Cheque and credit card fraud (780).

16. Other police services report increases in violent crime. Staffordshire Police Service, who adopted the principles of NCRS in 1999, has experienced a large increase in assault allegations and a concomitant reduction in the detection rate. West Midlands Police Service experienced a similar trend. These likely increases will need to be taken into account when setting crime targets for 2002/03.

17. The NCRS project manager is a member of the Corporate Planning Working Group of the MPA and the full impact of the implementation of NCRS is being considered as part of the planning process for 2002/ 2003.

Monitoring the effects of NCRS

18. A key implication of NCRS is the necessity for police services to monitor the effects of implementation. Considerable work is under way between the MPS and the Home Office to work up a formula for assessing rises in recorded crime that can be appropriately attributed to the introduction of NCRS. Further work in this field is being conducted on a national basis through the NCRS sub group.

Implications for MPS IT

19. Research into the capacity of both CRIS and Computer Aided Despatch (CAD) database indicates that both systems would cope with increases significantly higher than the predicted ranges. It would further appear that no re-configuration of either system is necessary to facilitate introduction of the standard.

Reducing the impact of abstraction front line

20. CMBVR is considering the expanded use of telephone investigation bureaux, (TIB) and Management Board is considering the opportunities currently available within the MPS to increase their use in terms of input support for front line staff in the immediate future. TIBs are already incorporated in the plans for the introduction of the new MPS communication process through the C3i project.

Internal and external perceptions

21. NCRS will lead to an increase in recorded crime. However, an important distinction should be made between 'ethical' crime recording and the principles of NCRS. The purpose of NCRS is not to focus upon ethics, but to take the views and perceptions of the victim into account when recording crime. This approach is almost identical to that developed by the MPS in its approach to hate crime.

22. For this reason, the cultural barriers which may exist in other police services are unlikely to be prevalent in the MPS; officers are already committed through delivery of the diversity strategy to victim-focused crime recording and NCRS sits comfortably alongside this practice.

23. A significant proportion of the NCRS project plan is the working up of the communication strategy, which will address issues around the briefing of Strategic partners, including the Greater London Authority and the Mayor's Office, as well as Borough Commanders, front line staff, media agencies and local communities. Throughout these briefings the relevance of the project in the national context will be a key message. It will be important the MPA and MPS press briefings are coordinated and that members are fully briefed on the impact of NCRS on crime data.

Benefits

24. The case for NCRS is sound and logical and there are a number of drivers for change. The move toward a National Performance and Management Framework will be reliant on police service comparisons. These comparisons cannot be made at present because of the variety of interpretations based upon the standards for, and application of the current crime recording rules.

25. The NCRS will provide a far more accurate account of criminality, which will be of assistance in further developing intelligence led policing and partnership approaches. It also provides a more realistic picture of true demand for police services, which will be useful for future resource allocation processes.

26. The new Home Secretary is fully cognisant of the impact NCRS will have on recorded crime levels in London and elsewhere, and has already expressed his support of the move to a consistent national standard. He has further stated that in future Home Office crime statistics will be published in parallel with that of the British Crime Survey, so as to provide evidence that the recorded level of crime will henceforth more accurately reflect the reality of crime recording revealed by the British Crime Survey.

C. Financial implications

These are contained in the body of the report.

D. Background papers

None.

E. Contact details

Report author: Christine Jones.

For information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

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