How do the police fudge the numbers to keep us all happy?
About ten years ago, there was an investigation into the police falsifying crime statistics. It resulted in the ONS (The official government statistics organisation) stopping using any statistics, reports, etc., that originated from the police. The figures were manipulated to make the police look like they were performing better than they were for various reasons. These are the ways that the police did and continue to manipulate their numbers:
- Close down reported crimes that the police do not think will get to court. If the police believe the CPS will not take on the case, they do all in their power, including simply shutting the case down, to ensure that as few cases as possible officially go through investigation to NOT being tried in court. This makes the police look like they have a higher closure rate than they do.
- The police report serious crimes such as “rape” and “sexual assault” as “crime-related incidents” or “no crimes”. This ensures that the public notices of crimes are kept to a minimum in all official reports. For example, if a child complains of being abused, the police talk to the parents, who tell them that the child is imaginative, and the police then write it up as a “no crime” because the police officer or detective makes the decision there and then that they would be hard to prove the abuse claim. These sorts of cases have even been noted as false allegations, ensuring that if the abuse victim speaks up again, they will not be believed. This tactic works with robberies logged as “theft snatch”, etc. Theft snatch sounds much more friendly than robbery, so the public is happy.
- Encouraging existing prisoners to confess to more crimes with a promise of reward and no further jail time. The police go and see a paedophile already in prison and get him to admit to several other sex crimes that he did not commit. The prisoner receives some special treatment reward, and the police “solve” another three sex crimes; their numbers look better, and they get a better budget and promotion in the next fiscal year. The exact process works for any crime.
Why would the police manipulate their figures?
The police are like any organisation; they get yearly targets that they have to hit for promotions, budget allocation, recruitment, etc. For example, London’s target of a 20% crime reduction was set by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime and passed down the chain of command from the commissioner to constables on the beat, whose chances of promotion were linked to hitting the target. So, guess what is the most important thing on the minds of all the police staff involved in trying to hit this ridiculous target? Former Met Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Barron told the committee: “When targets are set by offices such as the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, what they think they are asking for are 20% fewer victims. That translates into ‘record 20% fewer crimes’ as far as… senior officers are concerned.”
Mr Barron also said that inaccurate recording of crimes impacted the ground, as the statistics were used to determine the number of officers deployed in particular areas which were “grossly out of kilter with the real demand as opposed to the recorded demand”.
He said: “There is a massive disconnect between the reality of what’s happening on the ground and the formula used to determine the appropriate workforce for the borough.”
He said: “The issues we are describing here are common knowledge at every level in every force within England and Wales.”
He added: “We now find ourselves in a situation where potential forces will be amalgamating across England and Wales and, therefore, chief officers might think it is a good idea to shine bright at this time because they want to be one of the few surviving chief constables.
“How do they do that? They achieve their performance targets. This is fraud.”
Other police techniques to manipulate their crime figures
Former West Midlands chief inspector Dr Rodger Patrick explained that officials applied methods such as “cuffing,” “nodding,” “skewing,” and “stitching” to improve the appearance of the figures.
“Cuffing” crimes, he added, can involve officers determining they did not believe complainants, documenting numerous events in the exact location as a single crime or recording thefts as “lost property,” burglaries as “theft from property,” and attempted burglaries as “criminal damage”.
Senior officials may falsely remove crimes from the register, he asserted.
“Nodding” was the cooperation between police personnel and offenders to raise detection rates, claimed Dr Patrick.
Claiming a lesser punishment, a criminal can plead several charges in return for being charged for less serious ones.
“Skewing” was the process whereby forces allocated resources to those areas determined by performance criteria, he added.
“Stitching” suspects using false confessions was “prevalent in the past, but less so now, or so we think”, he remarked.
Yes, but that was ten years ago, the police screamed! Ok, let’s look more recently then
Now, who wants to hear about domestic abuse? Certainly NOT the police!
After police were told to tally fewer offences purposefully, ten per cent fewer domestic abuse crimes have been documented in new figures released today.
The Home Office has instructed the police to count only one crime each time a victim comes forward and to let them count fewer crimes of threatening or abusive messages in the newly adopted rules set for June 2023. The Commissioner worries about these developments downplaying the frequency of domestic abuse reports. According to her, domestic violence is hardly a one-time occurrence.
The figures released today are the first to show a whole three months of data gathered since these guidelines took effect. Compared to the same quarter in the previous year, new research from the Domestic Violence Commissioner reveals that there were 23,000 fewer documented crimes of domestic violence.
Comparatively, from July–September 2023 to the same quarter in 2022, the number of malicious communication offences reported by the police has likewise dropped by 42 per cent. Commonly reported by victims of domestic abuse, these offences comprise threatening or abusive messages.
Comparatively, from July – September 2023 to the same quarter in 2022, public order offences with a domestic abuse flag were also down by twenty-four per cent, a reduction of over 3,000.
The revised counting regulations state that police are sometimes not obliged to count public order violations and malicious communications.
At 862,654 in the year ending September 2023, reports of domestic violence remain high. About one in six offences reported to the police were domestic abuse-related; a third of all violence against the person crimes.
The Domestic Abuse Commissioner notes that although the charge rate is six per cent and the conviction rate has somewhat dropped to about five per cent, the conviction rate is shockingly low.
In the Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan 2022, the Commissioner argues these counting rule changes contradict the Home Office’s pledge to “increase reporting to the police of domestic abuse-related incidents and recorded crimes.”
“I fear that this reduction in police-recorded domestic abuse is down to a change in counting, not a change in the true number of victims reporting to the police,” said England and Wales’ Domestic Abuse Commissioner Nicole Jacobs.
“It is a grave error to prioritise administrative simplicity over factual reporting with victim confidence in the criminal justice system at an all-time low. This minimises the reality for victims and the efforts of police personnel to safeguard them.
“I worry that as fewer crimes are recorded, domestic violence will take less importance, and it will be difficult to comprehend police activity on domestic abuse, which is vital in improving police response.” These new counting regulations must be stopped until their effect is thoroughly assessed.
One in six police calls comes from reports of domestic violence, a terrible and common crime. Our justice system has to learn to handle this extremely grave challenge.
“All eyes are on the forthcoming domestic abuse Joint Justice Plan from police chiefs, which I hope will reverse things across all forty-three forces. It determines the safety of victims and survivors all around.
CPS tells police to give them more robust rape cases or not to bother them
Rape prosecutions have seen a terrible fall since 2016/17. To raise its conviction rate to 60%, the Crown Prosecution Service chose that year to reduce the quantity of rape cases it handled. They would accept just what they thought to be “stronger” cases. It was prosecuting almost 1,000 fewer rapes within a year and 2,000 fewer the following year. Should there be no prosecution, there cannot be a conviction; so, this decision meant that rape convictions had dropped sharply from 2991 in 2016/17 to 1,517 this year. If this decision had not been taken, over 1,500 raped offenders still on the streets could have been convicted. The government’s response plan included a few specific steps to change the way rape is investigated and convicted. And it would take over 17 years to get rape charges levels back to those of 2016/17 at the current rate of advancement.
Operation Soteria’s implementation was a significant rape review recommendation meanwhile. The pilot, Operation Bluestone, observed a group of very seasoned academics welcomed into a police force to examine how rape was probed rigorously. Its results were quite alarming. Thus, this team of academics developed an “offender-centric” research methodology that, as “Operation Soteria” has since been adopted by five additional forces, has excellent potential to be applied to fourteen more police forces.
Soteria is ultimately supposed to be a National Operation Model. The police have already shown great interest in Soteria; the administration plans also to involve the Crown Prosecution Service. The CPS has, however, only sporadically engaged with the Soteria academics thus far, with little overall involvement. The CPS has taken many months to designate an academic of their own; at the time of writing, their terms of reference are unclear. Finally, we have the long-awaited 2022 Independent report into Operation Soteria – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/operation-soteria-year-one-report
Approved by the Home Office, the report examines 80,000 rape reports across five forces using a thorough analysis of police data and discloses in-depth conversations with officials. It is among the first times researchers have been granted access to such a spectrum of police information and have collaborated with particular agencies to learn about the course of investigations.
The police “how to” get rid of unwanted reports/figures of sexual assault or rape:
- Police officers demonstrated explicit victim blaming and a lack of belief in the victim, which impacted the subsequent investigation. For example, victim credibility was often focused on and used to close or not investigate cases.
- Police officers don’t think that [sexual offences] should be a priority for policing
- Police officers stated that they believed that most reports of rape are just examples of ‘regretful sex’ or that if victims presented additional issues, such as mental health problems or alcohol/substance misuse, then this was the victim’s problem and the legal system was not obligated to safeguard them.
- Police checks to see if suspects had already been reported were not always carried out, even though more than half of named suspects had criminal histories for a range of offences, and one in four had a history of sexual offending.
- It found that around one-third of police-recorded rapes examined were also related to domestic abuse but not reported as domestic abuse, and charge rates were lower for cases involving partners and former partners.
If you or anyone you know have been affected by the people highlighted in this article, then please report those individuals to the Police on 101 (999 if an emergency) or visit their online resources for further details of the options for reporting a crime. You can also make a report at Crimestoppers should you wish to be completely anonymous. There is help available on our support links page.