Performance report: case tracking of street crime arrests

Report: 6
Date: 19 September 2002
By: Commissioner

Summary

The purpose of this report is to provide details of the Home Office Case Tracking Project. The report highlights the scope of the project and examines how the information is collected and used. The report also discusses the next steps in the development of this project.

A. Recommendation

Members are asked to note the report.

B. Supporting information

Introduction

1. The Home Office, in response to the Prime Minister’s drive on Street Crime, asked PA Consulting Group to set up a case tracker system to allow the progress of street crime arrests to be tracked from the date of arrest through to the final outcome of the court case.

2. The system they designed was in many ways similar to the system used by the MPS Operation Safer Streets to monitor arrests during the first phase of that campaign.

3. For this reason, the MPS were already aware of some of the difficulties that lie ahead in collecting the information required. The MPS was also in a position to offer some advice regarding the collection of this information, unfortunately, the system that was presented for use was already in its final stages of development and as such not open to changes.

4. PA acknowledged that their system was put together in a very short space of time and as such had not had the benefit of user consultation or piloting.

5. The system only collects data from the 15 Operation Safer Streets boroughs and references to the MPS in this paper refers only to those boroughs. The system is also used by the 10 other forces in the governments street crime initiative.

Scope of information collected

6. The Home Office PA Tracker (HO PA Tracker) is essentially a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. There are no automatic links with any of the existing MPS data collection systems. This means that all information has to be collected from existing systems and then transferred manually onto the HO PA Tracker spreadsheet. Depending on the number of arrests being made each day, this can take up a considerable amount of time for the member of staff completing the spreadsheet. No additional personnel were provided for this system and this additional work has to be carried out as part of an existing member of staff’s duties.

7. The HO PA Tracker records details of each person arrested and of each street crime offence they are arrested for. This does not provide a full record of police activity against street crime but does enable details to be known of the number of people arrested for a street crime offence and of the number of street crimes where an arrest has been made.

8. It needs to be remembered that for the purposes of the HO PA Tracker system, the definition of street crime is wider than that normally used by the MPS. Street crime for the HO PA Tracker system is:

• Robbery (Commercial and Personal)
• Theft – Snatch
• Offences involving the use of firearms
• Car-jacking

9. Car-jacking is essentially a robbery where the property stolen is a motor vehicle.

10. The information collected in relation to persons arrested is quite comprehensive, as is the arrest outcome – what happens to the arrested person (charged/cautioned/released without charge). However, details of what happens where an arrested person is released pending further enquiries, e.g. further statements to be obtained, identification parade to be held, are more difficult to follow.

11. There is no information recorded concerning whether an arrested person is bailed or kept in custody following charge. An assumption is currently being made that if the time between arrest outcome – charge, and the date of first court appearance is less than 2 days, the person was detained in custody to appear before the court.

12. There is also no direct method of tracking what happens to a suspect who fails to appear at court on the first occasion. Boroughs are asked to make a note of this in the notes section but this is difficult to use for statistical purposes.

13. No record is maintained as to the number of court appearances before a case is finally disposed of.

14. Details of the final outcome are recorded but it is proving difficult to obtain these details in a timely fashion from the courts. Outer London Courts are a particular problem with Croydon claiming a six-week delay in getting court results.

15. In order to try to improve this situation, the CPS are being copied the details from the HO PA Tracker system and it is hoped that they will be able to provide details of the results of court appearances. However, this is in its early stages and not without its own teething problems.

16. For a full list of the fields contained in the HO PA Tracker system see Appendix 1. This lists the four sections of the HO PA Tracker, Arrest/Outcome/First Court Appearance/Final outcome and the fields under each heading.

Results

17. The data is collected weekly on a Thursday. Each week the data collected replaces that collected the previous week and updates existing information. So far (as at 31 July 2002) there are over 3000 entries on the HO PA Tracker system. This represents 2648 persons arrested since the 11 April 2002 some of whom were arrested for more than one street crime offence.

18. The number of arrests is monitored weekly but the most current week tends to be subject to change as the HO PA Tracker users on borough update their records (see Appendix 2). This chart plots the weekly arrests for street crime (HO Definition).

19. The line graph included with this bar chart is the number of classified street crime offences recorded each week. It can be seen that generally, the number of arrests correlates to the number of offences on a weekly basis.

20. Additionally, information is examined as to the arrest outcomes and the final court disposal (see Appendix 3 and 4). The chart at Appendix 3 indicates that about 44% of the number of persons arrested are charged with a street crime offence (HO Definition). A further 6% are charged with another offence having been arrested for a street crime offence, 2% are cautioned and another 22% are pending, awaiting the results of further enquiries e.g. identification parade.

21. The remaining 26% are released without charge. There are various reasons why arrested persons are released ranging from poor identification evidence, to the victim refusing to assist police further.

22. The chart at Appendix 4 shows the court outcomes of the cases where the person arrested was charged with an offence and the case has been completed. 16% of cases have been resulted so far of which 7.1% have been found guilty. It must be remembered that the results of cases that are discontinued are known sooner than those cases that have proceeded to trial. This may be skewing the figures to suggest that more cases are being discontinued than is actually the case.

23. At this moment in time, 16% of cases have a court result. Approximately 50% of these cases are being discontinued for a variety of reasons ranging from being withdrawn by the CPS before getting to court, to victims and witnesses not attending court to give evidence.

24. What is not clear from these figures is why this is happening. Are witnesses being warned correctly and choosing not to turn up or are they simply not being warned in the first place? Enquiries are continuing to try to establish fuller information in this respect.

25. The information from these charts is forwarded to the Management Board SMT Meeting on the Friday morning following receipt of the data. So far this has generated requests for further information on the reasons behind court discontinuances. Additional information is provided in the summary section of the tracker return but this has proved insufficient for Management Board’s needs. Therefore a brief inspection was conducted to establish the facts behind the reasons highlighted. (See Appendix 11.)

26. This inspection has highlighted that often MPS records contain little or no details as to why cases are discontinued. For example, whilst it is possible to say that a percentage of cases were discontinued because a witness/victim failed to turn up at court. It is more difficult to determine:

• on how many occasions that case has been to court previously,
• did the witness/victim turn up on the previous occasion(s), and
• what were the reasons why was the case remanded previously?

27. The work being carried out in conjunction with the CPS is hoped to provide better and more informative details in these cases.

28. In addition to having MPS data, the Home Office also provides a complete return from all the forces taking part in the street crime initiative. This has enabled some comparative work to be undertaken. (Appendices 5, 6 and 7).

29. Appendix 5 mirrors the weekly information available for the MPS and shows that largely, the MPS is following the trends of the other forces involved in this project.

30. Appendix 6 indicates that the other police force areas (PFAs) charge a slightly higher proportion of the persons arrested (47%) and release correspondingly fewer persons without charge (21%).

31. Appendix 7 shows that 15% of cases elsewhere are resulted with a higher percentage of cases being found guilty (10.5%).

32. Information concerning the quality of the data return broken down to a borough level is forwarded to the Operation Safer Streets Gold and Silver meetings on the following Monday and Wednesday to enable emphasis to be placed on getting the information right. The Silver meeting includes representatives from all the 15 boroughs taking part in the HO PA Tracker system.

33. Further work is also in hand to explore different ways of presenting the information obtained from the HO PA Tracker system. This ranges from a comprehensive but “busy” table format to a simpler “Boston Box” type format and “attrition rate” chart (see Appendix 8,9 and 10).

34. Appendix 8 provides a snapshot of the borough performance on the HO PA Tracker. At various stages through the Criminal Justice process, comparisons are made with the MPS average to show whether a borough is doing better or worse than the MPS overall.

35. Appendix 9 is an attempt to plot performance in a Boston Box format. Ideally, with intelligent policing leading to the arrest of known suspects, the majority ought to be charged with very few being released for additional enquiries. The desirable quarter to be in is having a high percentage of arrested persons charged and few being released for further enquiries (Bottom Right).

36. Appendix 10 is simply a graphical illustration showing the fallout of cases along the Criminal Justice path. It seeks to identify where cases are failing to prompt investigation into why this is happening.

The next stage - Home Office PA Tracker II

37. It was only ever intended that the current HO PA Tracker based around an Excel spreadsheet would be an interim solution. The replacement for this system is Web based and will be hosted on the Criminal Justice Xtranat. This in turn will probably be replaced by the NSPIS Case and Custody system.

38. This system will allow the various key agencies in the criminal justice process involved in this project to create new records and update existing records on-line. This will remove the necessity of transferring data within and between agencies.

39. The new system will be piloted towards the end of August and into September and assuming the pilots go as planned, it is hoped that the new system will go live towards the end of this year.

40. The new system will continue to collect information in respect of “Street Crime Offences” (HO Definition) but will also be used to collect information on persons charged who are regarded as “Persistent Offenders”. This data will be collected from all forces and all BCUs representing a much bigger undertaking. It is envisaged that Persistent Offender targets will replace the government’s targets relating to Persistent Young Offenders (PYOs).

41. However, the new system will still be an “add-on” that has to be completed as a separate return with limited operational value. Work is still needed to ensure that a fully integrated cross-agency IT system is developed to enable data to be entered as part of a working business process that also produces the kind of management information that HO PA Tracker has been designed to deliver.

Conclusion

42. It is not unreasonable to expect the MPS to be in possession of the sort of information being asked for by the Prime Minister’s Office and the Home Office. The HO PA Tracker system has presented an alternative method of collating this information but only by using staff to undertake an additional task in an often already over stretched criminal justice unit.

43. The HO PA Tracker system has highlighted the difficulties in joining together the different MPS legacy IT systems. It has also highlighted the even greater difficulty in transferring information across the different agencies IT systems. The lead for IT development in London will come from the London Criminal Justice Board.

44. In the beginning, the MPS was aware that the nature of the information being taken from the HO PA Tracker returns was subject to considerable change each week. Now that the system has been operating for over 15 weeks, the percentages being seen in the reports appear to be settling down and it is likely that these are beginning to give a truer reflection of how the MPS is performing in this area.

45. The primary areas that require a greater understanding are:

• why over 25% of persons arrested end up being released without any charge being preferred and
• why nearly half the number of arrested persons who end up being charged with an offence, have their cases discontinued either by the CPS or on the directions of the court, without the case being heard.

Equality and diversity implications

None

Financial implications

None.

E. Background papers

None.

F. Contact details

Report author: Inspector Trevor Adams

For more information contact:

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

Send an e-mail linking to this page

Feedback