Clear up Rate

Report: 10
Date: 09 September 2004
By: Commissioner

Summary

This report compares MPS performance on detections (clearups) between July 2003 and July 2004, sets it in the longer historic perspective since April 2000, describes recording practices, and outlines how good practice on improving detections is being shared.

The overall detection rate has improved from 14.4% in July 2003 to 16.9% in July 2004 (for the rolling 12-month period). The longer perspective, since April 2000, is of broadly static crime around one million offences per year, and a detection rate around 15%.

Improved analysis of detections data revealed that both the sanction and non-sanction detection rates could be increased. The Detections Action Plan is delivering the increases through

• Increasing the numbers of staff authorised to grant non-sanction detections and improving the training given to them;
• Widening the performance culture to address detections for all notifiable offences;
• Improving the accuracy of crime data to increase the recognition of actual performance;

A glossary of terms is shown in Appendix 1.

A. Recommendations

1. Members are asked to note the contents of this report.

B. Supporting information

Performance context

1. When there is sufficient evidence to say who has committed a crime, it can be described as ‘detected’ or ‘cleared up’. This is an important measure of police performance and there are complex rules to measure it that have evolved over time.

2. There are two major ways in which a crime can be thought of as detected:

• Sanction detection (also known as Judicial Disposal) –

1. If a person charged, summonsed, or the person consents to the matter being taken into consideration by a court when s/he is sentenced, then the offence is described as a “sanction detection”;
2. Where a person admits the offence and an adult caution, youth reprimand, or youth final warning is administered (by a police officer at a police station);
3. Sanction detection also includes where a penalty notice for disorder is issued (for a notifiable offence).

• Non sanction detection (also known as administrative detection) –

1. Where the guilt of a person is clear but for one (or more) reasons (shown in Appendix 1), a sanction detection is not possible or appropriate.
2. Reasons for not using a sanction detection include where the offender is dead or too ill to proceed, a complainant or essential witness is dead, or where they refuse to give evidence, or no useful purpose would be served.

3. The Table below summarises how each category of detection relate:

Table 1- Types of detection

4. There are two principal ways of measuring what proportion of crime is “detected” or “cleared up”: One uses only those detections that potentially result in a sanction i.e. sanction detections”, and the other counts all ways of detecting a crime and includes non-sanction or administrative detections.

5. The argument for monitoring total detections is that they provide greater public reassurance since the MPS solves more crimes than only those where a sanction applies. For example, many domestic violence cases are detected, but may not involve a sanction detection in the form of a charge, caution, formal warning; because the victim does not wish to support a criminal process. Detection rates are included in this year’s Policing Plan.

6. Sanction detections are the more important measure, since they represent a start (in the case of charge or summons) and/or end (in the case of adult cautions, youth reprimands, etc) of formal proceedings against the accused. Sanction detections however are an output, rather than an outcome. The quality of a sanction detection needs to be viewed in the context of the outcome – Offences Brought To Justice - which is subject to two Public Service Agreements (PSA2, Domain 2 and PSA3).

7. Unfortunately, there has been little consensus on what constitutes the most meaningful measure of detections. Consequently, different Forces used different measures making it hard to compare performance. Most used total detections which include administrative detections, while others counted just judicial disposals. The Home Office has a PPAF working party which is attempting to bring consensus and clarity to these definitional issues.

MPS overall performance

8. The detection rate for the twelve months ending July 2003 compared with the period ending July 2004 shows that the performance for Total Notifiable Offences has improved from 14.4 to 16.9 percent (as shown in Chart 1 below). This is a 17 percent improvement.

Chart 1 - TNO Detection rates (Rolling 12 months July 2003 and July 2004)

9. The month-by-month detection rate (Chart 2 below) shows the rate of improvement in MPS performance and demonstrates that it is on track to achieve the target of an annual detection rate of 20% for Total Notifiable Offences.

Chart 2 - TNO monthly detection rates compared with target.

MPS performance by crime type

10. Table 2 below shows a breakdown by major priority crime types that either feature as a government or policing plan priority, or other volume crimes which the MPS monitors. Figures are for the rolling 12-month period ending July 2003 compared with the period ending July 2004.

Table 2- Detection rate by crime type (Rolling 12 months July 2003 and July 2004)

11. Key points are:

• Across most crime types shown, performance has improved compared with last year. Burglary detections are an exception as they have fallen slightly from 11.7 to 10.9 percent, however this is in the context of a reduction in the number of crime of over 7% thereby reducing the opportunities for detections.
• MPS is exceeding the target for rape, racist crime, domestic violence and homophobic crime, and needs to improve performance over the coming year by 9 percentage points for robbery.
• There is a differential detection rate between victims from visible ethnic minority communities and from white communities which has been identified as a consequence of the detections analysis. The reasons for it are not readily identifiable and further work is needed to understand what drives this disparity.

Historic perspective

12. Since the establishment of the MPA in July 2000 crime figures have remained around the one million crimes per year. Detection rates in the same period have remained similarly stable at about 15%. (Chart 3 below.) Prior to the MPA period detection rates had fallen significantly. The reasons summarised in Appendix 2.

Chart 3 - Total Notifiable Offences and Detection Rates since inception of MPA to end of last financial year.

Turnaround – The Detections Action Plan

13. Because of the increasing importance of detections performance an analysis was conducted and an action plan formulated and led by ACTP.

14. The improvement in detection perfomance was initially stimulated by addressing the volume of non-sanction detections. The number of staff able to authorise such detections was increased and they were given additional training. The underlying issues facing sanction detections have also been addressed as part of the action plan discussed below.

Improved recording practice

15. The Crime Reporting Information System (CRIS) is increasingly complex. In the context of an increasingly complicated policing environment and a growing and inexperienced workforce, crime recording suffers from a level of inaccuracy.

• Over-recording of crime - recent audit work suggests that detection rates may be understated because the MPS may be over-recording total notifiable offences by approximately 3.5%. This is a combination of recording incidents as crimes when either at the time, or subsequently, it becomes apparent that no crime in law or according to the relevant Home Office Counting Rules has been committed.
• Under-recording of detections - Improvements in housekeeping are improving the detection count. For example, there is evidence that some reports of crimes have not been updated with a detection where suspects have been charged, cautioned, summonsed, etc. The scale of this issue is difficult to quantify as it requires reconciling information on two corporate systems (the Custody system and the Crime Reporting Information System (CRIS)) in light of the Home Office Counting Rules.

16. One way of improving data quality that is being actively considered is to use a smaller cadre of specialist inputters as an interface between the crime recording system and initial investigators. A pilot to run on two boroughs is being planned and should start in this performance year. Training, and keeping updated, over 20,000 members of staff to use the sophisticated and evolving crime recording system to an acceptable level of data quality may no longer be cost-ineffective and this process is currently undergoing review.

Shared good practice

17. The sharing of good practice has been a major reason for improvements in detection performance. There have been several new detection initiatives (Operation Asgard and the Detections Project) as well as a programme of performance reviews, which cover wider performance issues as well.

Operation Asgard

18. This operation is run from TP Headquarters and focuses on the Crime Reporting Information system (CRIS) and the significant part it plays in improving the detections rates.

19. Each Borough has a crime Management Unit responsible for administering that Borough’s crime reports. The Operation Asgard team have been responsible for training dedicated staff within those units to ensure detection opportunities are not overlooked.

20. After identifying the need to increase the amount of Designated Decision Makers (who are responsible for authorising detections) on each Borough, the Asgard team have run training for Detective Inspectors and Sergeants to assist them to perform this role. They will add resilience to the activity which was conducted only by Detective Chief Inspectors.

Detections Project

21. This project has sharpened the focus of key staff in improving detections. Part of its work has been to prepare/update policy, guidance and manuals to ensure they support the aim of improving detections. Training co-ordination is provided by Operation Asgard.

Performance Review Visits

22. All 32 Boroughs were visited, interviews held with staff involved in the detections process using the criteria Leadership, Supervision, Processes, Training, Performance and Monitoring, and staffing.

23. Successful solutions have been identified at each Borough that assist to improve performance. For example

• Resilience for key staff is paramount due to the expert knowledge required to perform the task;
• Nominating a dedicated detections officer to ensure procedures and processes are in place and adhered to;
• Adopting a local creative marketing strategy to focus officers’ attention; and
• Identifying corporate issues and progressing them through to successful solutions.

Leadership

24. Each week Commander (TP Performance) holds themed Crime Control Strategy Meetings. The most recent round were focussed on detections. They have reviewed the performance of all 32 Boroughs with particular focus on sharing best practice to increase detections. They have raised the status of the issue with Borough Commanders.

Further work

25. The Detections Action Plan continues to change performance in a number of areas:

· A pilot to develop a specialist crime recording function will be designed and implemented on one or two boroughs and the lessons learned applied to a full proposal for business change;

· Performance measures will be improved to ensure that business processes are being rigorously applied;

· Corporate training will be revised in line with the training needs analysis for both specialists and all relevant staff in crime recording; and

· A revised manual for staff supervising and administering crime records will be rolled out to refresh the corporate standard, with a focus on identifying and developing detection opportunities;

26. The focus on detections as a corporate priority will continue and follow up reviews of some Boroughs will be conducted later in the year to monitor progress.

C. Race and equality impact

1. There is a race and equality impact regarding detections as set out in above

D. Financial implications

1. Whilst this paper makes no explicit financial proposals, a change to business practice that creates a specialised crime recording function would require additional funding. More detailed consideration is being given to the financial implications of such a change.

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report authors: Lawrence Morris and Mark Castell DCC2

For more information contact:

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

Appendix 1

Definitions

For the purposes of this report, unless otherwise specified, data referred to include all notifiable offences (Total Notifiable Offences, or TNO). In general, TNOs include the full range of offences that are usually dealt with by the police and required by the Home Office to be counted on crime recording systems.

Detected crimes are those that have been cleared up by the police in accordance with the counting rules issued by the Home Office. For any crime to be counted as detected the following conditions must apply:

• A notifiable offence has been committed and recorded
• A suspect has been identified (and interviewed, or at least informed that the crime has been cleared up)
• There is sufficient evidence to charge the suspect
• The victim has been informed that the offence has been cleared up.

There are several methods of counting a crime as detected. These include:

1. Charging an offender
2. Issuing a summons to an offender
3. Issuing a caution to an offender
4. Having an offence (either previously or not previously reported) accepted for consideration at court
5. Other methods such as reprimands, final warnings and penalty notices for disorder
6. Counting an offence as cleared up but taking no further action for any one of the following reasons:

• Offender, victim or essential witness is dead or to ill
• Victim refuses or is unable to give evidence
• Offender is under the age of criminal responsibility
• Police or CPS decides that no useful purpose would be served in proceeding
• The time limit of six months for commencing prosecution has been exceeded.

A detection includes all of the methods listed at I to VI above.

Sanction detections are a sub-set of detections and include methods I to V above.

Judicial disposals are essentially the same as sanction detections, but exclude offences taken into consideration at court that were not previously reported in IV above.

Administrative detections The methods of detection listed at VI are known as administrative detections or admin clear-ups.

Offences brought to justice (OBTJ) include: cautions, reprimands, final warnings, convictions, offences taken into consideration (TIC) at court and penalty notices for disorder (PND) for recorded offences.

An offence may be taken into consideration (TIC) by a court when deciding on sentence and compensation awards. It is an alternative to charging an offender with a substantial number of offences. The offender must admit their guilt before the court can take the offence into consideration. The MPS pursues ethical TICs as a legitimate investigative method.

A caution can be given when there is sufficient evidence for a conviction and it is not considered to be in the public interest to institute criminal proceedings. For a caution to be issued there must be evidence of the offender’s guilt sufficient to give a realistic prospect of conviction; the offender must admit the offence; and the offender (or, in the case of a juvenile, their parent or guardian) must understand the significance of a caution and give informed consent to being cautioned.

A reprimand or final warning, (or to give them their proper title, youth reprimand and youth final warning), are given when a constable has evidence that a child or young person has committed an offence and that the evidence is such that, if the offender were prosecuted for the offence, there would be a realistic prospect of conviction. Furthermore, the offender must admit they committed the offence and must not have been previously convicted of an offence. The constable must be satisfied that it would not be in the public interest to prosecute the offender.

A reprimand may be given if the offender has not previously been reprimanded or warned, unless it is considered that the offence is so serious that it requires a warning. A warning is given if the offender has not previously been warned, or where a previous warning has been issued, the offence was committed more than two years after the date of the previous warning and the offence is not so serious as to warrant a charge.

Prison visits, or properly, post sentence visits, allow for an offence to be detected whereby evidence exists, regardless of interview or admission, that is sufficient to charge for an offence, but the offender is serving a sentence.

A conviction is each finding of guilt for every (notifiable) offence considered by a criminal court for each convicted person. A finding of guilt would include a plea of guilty.

Appendix 2

The reduction in detections performance between 1998 and the MPA period can be accounted for as in Chart 4.

Chart 4 – Relative proportions of the reduction in detection rates between 1998 and MPA period.

27. Administrative detections – Almost half the change is explained by the fall in administrative detections. This was driven by a corporate decision to change practice and not include administrative detections in the performance indicator.

28. Workload – About a third of the difference is due to an increase in workload, measured by offences per police officer. Reported offences per police officer have increased by 17 percent over the period (from 40.4 to 47.2 offences per police officer). However, some of this difference in workload is due to changes in counting rules over the period. These include the introduction of the National Crime recording Standard (NCRS) in April 2002, the addition of common assault as a recordable offence in 1998, and changes to the way fraud and forgery is counted (from an offence count to a victim count). It is difficult to disaggregate these effects accurately.

29. Judicial disposals (JDs) – For this period, the MPS’s main measure of detection performance was judicial disposals. About 15 percent of the difference in detections is due to a decrease in judicial disposals per police officer. Most of the decrease is due to a reduction JDs per officer related to theft and handling, with some reduction in drugs. This reflects a switch in focus towards priority crimes such as robbery and burglary where crime levels have fallen and sanction detections are less easy to achieve.

30. Other reasons – Detections fell by 10% as a result of a fall in detections gained by prison visits, formal warnings and Taken Into Considerations (TICs) not previously reported. The MPS decided some years ago that it would put all its effort into arresting criminals still at large rather than visiting criminals who were still in prison.

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