Performance report: financial year April to August 2004

Report: 5
Date: 4 November 2004
By: Commissioner

Summary

This report provides an overview of performance for the financial year to date, i.e. April to August 2004. Where comparisons are made, these are against the corresponding period, last year, i.e. April to August 2003. The style of the report has been changed in order to provide more in-depth explanation of the exceptions highlighted in the accompanying tables in Appendix 1. The report’s structure has also been changed to align performance headings more closely with those domains set out in the Policing Performance and Assessment Framework (PPAF). Also attached at Appendix 2 is a proposed change in format for the tables as agreed with the MPA.

A. Recommendations

That the report be noted.

B. Supporting information

Reducing Serious Crime

1. Gun enabled crime has fallen over the first five months of the year. Compared with the corresponding period last year, there has been a 14.4% reduction, equating to 254 fewer offences. Over the same period, the detection rate stands at 25% against a target of 20%.

2. Serious Crime Directorate attribute these successes to a number of long-term interventions, including:

• SCD4 Forensic Services have now established a ‘Gun Clearing House’ through which all firearms, of whatever category, and ammunition seized across the MPS are submitted. This department is connected to the National Firearms Forensic Intelligence database on which all such submissions are catalogued and forensic traces entered. NFFID produce a quarterly report on gun seizure patterns throughout the UK.
• Brent, Southwark and Lambeth boroughs now have an active gun crime focus desk set up to provide a similar function as the SCD OCU in house units. They have been particularly successful in joint operations with SO19 to target hotspots and locations for the supply and use of firearms with many notable successes.
• The Safer Clubs Initiative, which is centred on situational approaches to stop guns and drugs being brought onto the premises in the first place. Great effort has been made by the Clubs and Vice office in partnership with Trident and the Boroughs to address this a specific type of operation has been pioneered by SCD2(2) as a method of asserting police control over specific locations such as pubs, cafes or snooker halls which have become safe havens for armed criminals. They involve large numbers of police officers (approximately 500) using the new MPS X-Ray machine to search ALL persons within a given location or in a strictly controlled and defined area. The equipment will quickly locate guns, knives and drugs on large numbers of people passing through a search tent.
• Working in partnership with groups such as Mothers Against Guns has raised the profile of gun crime issues within vulnerable communities.
• Allied to this has been the co-ordinated effort from both Serious Crime Directorate and Territorial Policing to provide a ‘joined-up’ and focussed approach to bringing down gun crime, manifested in documents such as the three-year action plan.

3. The value of criminal assets recovered continues to climb with £18.5m recovered, thus already achieving the £8m target for 2004/05. It should be stressed that this figure only covers recoveries by SCD6. Once the Joint Assets Recovery Database (JARD) is fully operational, this information will be able to be captured for the rest of the MPS and will allow more accurate targets to be set for next year.

4. The number of criminal networks disrupted totals 23, which is just one short of the 24 required to be disrupted this year. Recent initiatives in this area have included:

• Joint enquiry with a leading bank’s fraud team that resulted in eight suspects being arrested for conspiracy to defraud.
• Arrests of five individuals of a criminal organisation believed to be involved in protection rackets and drugs importation and distribution.

Reducing volume crime

5. The overall residential burglary trend continues to fall, currently standing almost 12% lower than the same period last year, against a target of 7% reduction. The main boroughs contributing to this were Harrow, Camden and Hounslow.

6. Of concern is that while the overall trend is down, there have been two consecutive rises in July and August. Although these are not statistically significant and remain within expected limits based on past performance. Furthermore, analysis shows that there are seasonal increases in the summer months.

7. Violent crime has risen for the fourth consecutive month and stands at just over 35 offences per 1000 population compared with a recent average of 27 offences per 1000 population. The rise in violence against the person has been primarily increased for a number of reasons:

• From April to September this year, violent crime had risen 8.6% compared to the same period the previous year. This equates to 104,200 offences, an increase of 8,300. Two-thirds of the total offences of violent crime do not involve an injury to the victim.
• Two-thirds of the rise - 5,500 offences - can be attributed to increased police activity, such as issuing Fixed Penalty Notices for offences such as disorder. The Met is committed to tackling violent crime and disorder, much of which is fuelled by alcohol, and through activities such as Operation Optic is sending a clear message that this will not be tolerated.
• Also included in this figure are assaults against police officers, which have increased by 40%, and possession of offensive weapons, which have increased by 11%.
• Of the remaining 2,700 offences, reported to us by victims, some 20% involve alcohol and tend to be concentrated around Thursday, Friday and Saturdays, usually in the street.
• Changes to the National Crime Recording System continue to have an impact. In this case, increases in offences where the victim is injured are due to more accurate recordings of offences by officers; for example, common assaults were previously counted as ‘no injury’ but are now recorded as ABH (less serious with injury). Similarly, woundings (less serious with injury) are now recorded as GBH (more serious).

Investigating crime

8. The overall detection rate for total notifiable offences (TNOs) is also climbing and currently stands at 18.6%. The growth in detection rates has been marked from May but has been particularly high in July and August. It is worth highlighting that August saw the start of Met-wide activity targeting bail absconders with almost 1,000 people arrested and charged.

9. Sanctioned detection (SD) rates for the main priority crime types have all remained relatively static during the financial year to August 2004 with the exception of motor vehicle crime.

10. The SD rate for motor vehicle crime has accelerated to 4.5% for the financial year to date, boosted by excellent performance between June and August 2004. Some of this rise has been attributed to the growth in forensication and a positive charging policy, whereby every stolen vehicle recovered at seven pilot boroughs is taken for forensic testing. It is hoped that repeat offenders in particular will be identified through the scheme.

11. The MPS is also carrying out work to bring more offences to justice. A recent development has involved lobbying to ensure that Penalty Notices for Disorder encompass a wider range of more serious offences, including criminal damage and shoplifting. Also of note is a re-focussing on efforts to increase the number of offences take into consideration as these represent a key component of the overall number of offences brought to justice. Finally, the MPS is re-examining its processes in order to obtain results from the courts quicker and this has involved a pilot at Brent and Bromley Magistrates’ Courts.

Promoting public safety

12. The commissioning brief asks for an explanation in the rise in detections for hate crime, especially domestic violence. Background information can be seen in charts 1 to 3 overleaf. In all three crime types, the growth in detections has been helped by a rise in administrative detections, although this appears to have tailed off in the past few months for homophobic crime.

13. Examining domestic violence more closely in Chart 1 shows that the rise in detections has been particularly marked since December 2003.

14. Two of the initiatives that could have attributed to the rise in domestic violence detections, although the extent of their efficacy requires testing, have been around:

1. The introduction of new reporting and risk assessment form 124d, which has given more structure and guidance to the initial response to domestic violence. This is more likely to result in improved arrests and hence sanctioned detections but also facilitates administrative detections.
2.  Also of note is that in September 2003, the MPS and the Crown Prosecution Service signed a service level agreement that supported positive action in domestic violence cases, including progressing ‘victimless’ prosecutions where appropriate. Since then this has had the effect of increased detections for offences that were already reported, which also explains the rises after this date.

Chart 1: Domestic Violence Detection Rates [GIF image; 11KB]

Chart 2: Racial Offences Detection Rates [GIF image; 13KB]

Chart 3: Homophobic Offences Detection Rates [GIF image; 14KB]

Citizen focus

15. Survey data is now available for the first quarter 2004/05. Formal targets have provisionally been set but await further confirmation.

16. The MPS has achieved varying levels of satisfaction depending on the stage of a particular investigation. For example, victim satisfaction [1] with respect to making contact with the police stands at 82.1%. Within this, victims who report their crime by a personal visit to a police station are more likely to be satisfied (84%) with the ease of contacting someone compared to all other methods of reporting crimes yet only 24% of respondents visit the police station to report a crime.

17. Satisfaction levels then drop to 34.2% when respondents commented on action taken by police. Here, there is a wide degree of variation depending on which type of offence the victim has suffered from. Burglary victims are the most likely to state they were reassured compared to other victim groups.

18. The MPS is also viewed favourably when crime victims were asked about their treatment by police officers and staff with 86.1% of respondents expressing satisfaction with the way they were dealt with.

Resource usage

19. All objectives that have targets are on target with the only exception being traffic warden sickness. Between April and July 2004, traffic warden sickness stood at 12.3 days per year per employee, against a target of no more than 11 days sickness per employee per year.

C. Race and equality impact

Implications of performance against individual targets are considered in in-depth performance reports throughout the year. This report notes exceptions in strategic disproportional indicators where applicable.

D. Financial implications

The finance issues are highlighted in the NSPIS update.

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report authors: Vinay Bhardwaj, Higher Performance Analyst, Corporate Performance Group

For more information contact:

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

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