Audit of the National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS)

Report: 06
Date: 10 Jul 2003
By: Commissioner

Summary

The National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) was introduced in all police services in April 2002, to promote consistency and a victim oriented approach in crime recording. The Audit Commission completed its inspection of compliance with NCRS in March and has awarded the MPS an overall assessment of Amber. The newly-appointed MPS Force Crime Registrar and Crime Integrity Team are developing an action plan to address the identified areas for improvement, to improve the overall assessment in future inspections. This paper is to inform PPRC of the audit’s results and the MPS planned response.

A. Recommendations

That the Committee

1. notes the results of the inspection;
2. notes the proposed method for dealing with the requirement made by the Audit Commission for an action plan; and
3. approves the joint MPA/MPS outline media strategy.

B. Supporting information

Introduction

1. The National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) was introduced in all police services, in April 2002, as a result of ACPO led research which identified a lack of consistency in crime recording practices across forces. This was identified as a negative factor in assessing the comparative effectiveness of forces in fighting crime and, for individual forces, in identifying their own crime fighting priorities based upon accurate crime trend and pattern analysis.

2. The two primary aims of NCRS are:

• To promote greater consistency between police forces in the recording of crime.
• To take a more victim oriented approach to crime recording.

3. Recording of a crime should now take place, on the balance of probability, as a result of a report from a victim, witness or third party where the circumstances amount to an offence defined by law and where there is no credible evidence to the contrary.

4. The Home Office Police Standards Unit (PSU) monitors NCRS compliance. They use the Audit Commission to carry out performance reviews on their behalf, using a series of Investigations detailed in the Home Office Review Manual.

5. The findings are graded using the HO approved Traffic Light system:

• Green: good/satisfactory level, no further action required
• Amber: moderate performance, further work needed in key areas
• Red: some serious problems to be resolved

6. This includes scores for Crime Data Results, for the MPS and each BOCU, and subjective assessment of Management Arrangements and Police Authority impact; leading to the Overall Force Assessment for the MPS, which is amber.

Table 1 – Summary of results: overall assessment of the MPS

Table 2 - Results contributing to Overall Assessment

Analysis of MPS Crime Records Data results

7. The Police Standards Unit decided that only the first two of the seven Investigations would be used in this initial reporting year, which reflect the entry points to the crime recording system. The Investigations are:

• Crime related incidents closed, on CAD, with non crime codes
• Crimes transferred from incident log, CAD, to crime system

8. CAD refers to Computer Aided Despatch, i.e. the log of incidents. CRIS is the Crime Recording Information System, which records individual crime allegations and details of investigation, resulting in their subsequent classification according to Home Office counting rules. The two investigations are weighted, with Investigation 1 bearing a 70% weighting.

9. The Crime Records Score makes up 60% of the Overall Force Assessment and the Management Arrangements Score 40%. A high score in Investigation 1 is needed to achieve an overall high performance.

Investigation 1 - Incidents closed on non-crime codes

10. All CAD incidents are opened with a crime or non-crime code dependent upon the nature of the incident. To comply with NCRS all incidents must be closed with the correct code, determined by police action. Investigation 1 looked at a number of CAD incidents that had been opened with a crime code and should have been closed as crimes. Those that had been closed as crimes were counted as successes.

11. The Auditors examined 9192 incidents. Of those incidents 7020 should, in the opinion of the auditors, have resulted in crime reports based upon the information recorded on the initial incident log. From that proportion 5580 (79.5%) were closed on crime codes and 1440 (20.5%) were incorrectly closed on non-crime codes, or with insufficient justification. If a separate result had been given for Investigation 1 only, the MPS would have been graded Red, by half of one percent. Grades for this Investigation are: Red = less than 80%; Amber = 80% to 90%; Green = above 90%.

12. It is important to note that it is clearly acknowledged that the error rate of 20.5% should not be taken as an indication that we are “losing” that proportion of crime through inefficient or improper practice. It is rather that the MPS is failing to record to the standard required the reasons why an incident has been closed as a non-crime, i.e. to fully justify on the CAD entry why the result is a non-crime.

13. In addition, the MPS contends that the statistics given in respect of Investigation 1 in the report are, in fact, misleading in that they ignore the fact that 2172 incidents were clearly correctly dealt with as non-crime incidents. Other forces have also raised this issue.

14. The Auditors have stated that the crime records audit indicates some encouraging performance in closing incidents on crime codes relating to burglary, vehicle crime, domestic violence and violent crime. However they report that there is a generally poor performance in closing incidents relating to criminal damage, racist incidents and disturbances.

Investigation 2 - From incident log to crime system

15. This investigation simply requires that all incidents closed with a crime code on CAD have a corresponding crime report on CRIS. The entries examined are only those successfully closed in Investigation 1, in order to avoid double counting of “failed” entries. The Investigation 2 grades are: Red = less than 85%; Amber = 85% to 95%; Green = above 95%.

16. Of the 5580 incidents closed on a crime code from Investigation 1, only 43 (0.8%) could not be found on the crime recording system. This indicates a good performance against NCRS of 99.2%, well above the 95% threshold for green performance. If a separate result had been given for each Investigation, the MPS would have been graded Green for Investigation 2.

17. It is of note that the Auditors have commented on the fact that our CAD and CRIS systems are not yet integrated. However, they have not commented on the high performance achieved despite the lack of integrated systems, which they had previously agreed to do.

Analysis of individual BOCU crime records data results

18. Although graded Amber for Overall Crime Records Data, the rules state that if 50% of BOCUs are graded Red then so is the force. Of 33 MPS BOCUs (including Heathrow), 16 were graded Red for Investigation 1 as shown in table 3. The weighting meant this was their Overall Assessment also, despite all BOCUs achieving Green scores for Investigation 2.

Table 3 - Investigation 1 scores and Overall data assessment by BOCU

19. Under the current MPS process, to facilitate the introduction of NCRS, the Quality Assurance Officers at each of the 32 BOCUs and the 5 divisions of the City of Westminster conduct monthly self-audits. These provide an annual sample of 11,840 incidents for Investigation 1 (more than the Audit Commission’s sample of 9,192), from which those closed on a crime code are also examined for inclusion on the CRIS database, as Investigation 2. In addition, the monthly audits examine up to 13,320 recorded crimes to assess compliance with Home Office counting rules in respect of classification after investigation and correct counting of the number of offences and victims. As part of the action plan, this self-audit will be reviewed in the light of the Auditors’ view that the sample size is very low and is open to challenge. Communication and training will also be considered, in addition to the Police Notice, intranet sites and inspection activity by the Crime Integrity Team already utilised to introduce NCRS.

Management arrangements

20. The MPS was awarded an overall amber grading for Management Arrangements. There are many positive features and some clear areas for improvement, particularly in training arrangements and awareness of staff. Following comments relate to those themes graded green or red.

Table 4 - The overall grading is made up of the following results

Policy & administration

21. In the main the auditors were concerned about a lack of focus on ensuring that all MPS policies were NCRS compliant and that initially the role of Crime Registrar was split between the Inspectorate and PIB. The report acknowledges, however, that the MPS has subsequently created a single dedicated Force Crime Registrar post at senior level.

Staff awareness & training

22. Concerns centred on a training programme to introduce the concept of NCRS to the MPS with insufficiently clearly defined ownership. This resulted in poor knowledge levels among junior officers.

Resources

23. Praise was given for the pragmatic use of staff within the crime recording function who are on restricted and recuperative duties. This, together with the flexible management of available staff, allows individuals to gain experience of NCRS.

Quality of service

24. This grading reflects concerns about some aspects of the service delivered by the MPS. Specific comments included:

• Some staff were unable to clearly describe how the MPS identifies and responds to user needs in respect of reporting incidents and crime. Consequently there were concerns that the policies and processes have been developed with insufficient user focus.
• Recognition that Boroughs have worked hard to develop third party reporting and other initiatives to allow “hard to reach” groups to engage with the police, with a secondary benefit of increased confidence in the MPS. There was acknowledgement, however, that this initiative may be limited by the MPS investigation screening policy.
• There was a view that greater customer feedback on NCRS issues was needed to ensure that the developing needs of our customers are met.
• Some police station foyers were found to be not user-friendly, particularly for members of the community with disabilities, and there was a lack of useful information available in foyers. Some information that was available contradicted NCRS.

Good practice

25. It should be noted that the Auditors found evidence of Good Practice in every area of the Management Arrangements that they examined. These practices will eventually be recommended to all other forces by the PSU.

The police authority

26. The aim of this part of the review was to assess the role and impact of the Metropolitan Police Authority, in supporting the implementation of NCRS in the Metropolitan Police. An amber grading was awarded.

27. The Auditors stated that:

• The MPA has discussed NCRS with the MPS on several occasions and both received and produced reports on the subject, making their reports available on the public websites.
• The MPA is aware of and monitors the impact of NCRS on the Policing and Performance Plan 2002/2003 priorities and objectives.
• The MPA has decided to revise the estimated impact of the introduction of NCRS in relation to the 2002/03 targets and performance monitoring arrangements and receives quarterly monitoring reports.
• The Police Authority has identified a lead member with special interest for NCRS matters and regularly scrutinises reports received from the MPS.
• The MPA is planning to formalise its monitoring of and scrutiny of crime recording activity in order to further develop its target setting methodology. The long-term intention is to consider the introduction of new performance indicators.

Action plan

28. The MPS is required to agree an action plan with the Auditors prior to the official publication of their report. They identified 15 issues that they considered required attention, of which only 7 were considered High priority, 5 Medium and 2 Low. The Action Plan appears as Appendix 1. This will be implemented in liaison with Territorial Policing, and will focus on improving BOCU results, by improving communication through the BOCU crime managers’ forum, chaired by Commander Crime, and through training, particularly of CAD operators to ensure that the reasons for non crime results are fully explained.

Media strategy

29. The PSU is in the process of receiving the final reports of all forces from the Audit Commission, which it will analyse. At the present there is no comparative force data. Consideration may be given to releasing the results for what was a transitional year for many forces, but they may be regarded as management information only and not released collectively.

30. The MPS view is that any material regarding crime performance in the MPS is newsworthy and that some forces will want to publish their results whilst others will not. The MPS has also pointed out that it can only be a matter of time before the media produces its own league table of comparative performance, drawing such inferences as they think fit.

31. As a result, the Home Office is reviewing its position. In the meantime, the MPS needs to have a media strategy in place to deal proactively with the results of this audit before any appearance in the media. It is therefore proposed that a joint media position is finalised with DPA and agreed with the MPA, and that this should reflect that:

• The MPS supports the principles of NCRS, particularly its victim focus which links to the MPS Mission, Vision and Values.
• The MPS welcomes the opportunity to reflect more accurately the true picture of crime in London as this will help to ensure MPS priorities meet the needs of the people of London.
• MPS staff are committed to providing high standards of performance in all policing activity, including the recording of crime.
• The MPS broadly accepts the audit findings and recognises that there are areas for improvement, particularly in the recording of the actions taken in response to calls to police.
• The MPS is confident that its score in Investigation 1 indicates only a lack of understanding of NCRS requirements leading to ineffective incident result recording, which will be addressed.
• The MPS has appointed a dedicated Crime Registrar and Crime Integrity Team to ensure compliance with NCRS principles and to drive forward an Action Plan for improvement.

Conclusions

32. The MPS achieved an overall assessment of amber and our areas for improvement are achievable, in the main through training and heightened awareness of the NCRS principles. A central principle of NCRS is providing a victim oriented approach. This has been our approach for some years now, particularly in respect of more serious crime.

33. Most of the areas for improvement had already been identified and outlined in the Business Plan of the newly formed Crime Integrity Team, which will focus on ensuring compliance with NCRS so that over the next year we can improve our Overall Assessment.

C. Equality and diversity implications

The introduction of NCRS was intended to improve the service to members of the public reporting crime, and to ensure national and force consistency. Improvements in MPS crime recording practices in line with NCRS will ensure a higher quality of service to all victims of crime.

D. Financial implications

The appointment of a dedicated MPS Crime Registrar and creation of a Crime Integrity Team has been achieved from within existing resources. The development work arising from the NCRS Action Plan will be costed and achieved as far as possible from within existing budgets. Where this is not the case, existing processes for realigning budgets will be used.

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report author: Det. Ch. Supt. Stephen Condon, MPS Crime Registrar, updated by A/Supt. Ian Ronald, Deputy Crime Registrar

For more information contact:

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

Appendix 1: Table 5 – Action Plan

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