Some police forces including the Met are struggling to input a backlog of details of arrests and summons dating from before July 2000 to meet the deadline for the already-delayed Criminal Records Bureau.
Some police forces including the Met are struggling to input a backlog of details of arrests and summons dating from before July 2000 to meet the deadline for the already-delayed Criminal Records Bureau. This raises the prospect of hundreds of thousands of crime records of up to two years old not reaching the CRB before it starts issuing documents. Security industry licences are to rely on the CRB. Two large metropolitan forces are responsible for most of the backlog, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary reports, and are ‘likely to require additional resources to accelerate their respective July and August 2002 predicted completion dates’. The two forces are Greater Manchester and the Metropolitan Police respectively. The CRB, which will rely on the Police National Computer for data to hand out criminal record checks, is supposed to be running from the spring – though it was supposed to start months before.
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Many front-line police officers have already ‘given up’ on the Police National Computer, the inspectors report. Despite years of concerns over PNC data accuracy and timeliness, the inspectors say, ‘by early 2001, there were few signs of any significant improvements’. Seeking to meet a target of inputting 90 per cent of all arrest/summons details within one day, the inspectors say, ‘the England and Wales average at the start of the inspection [July 2001] was 55 days. The situation in respect of impending case results was worse’. The report describes the 55 days as ‘totally unacceptable’. In March 2001, there were 450,589 impending cases on PNC awaiting results – nearly half, 216,891, first recorded before July 2000.
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By October, the 216,891 was down to 98,296, and on that trend the police would clear the pre-July 2000 backlog by April, the inspectors say. However, while the backlog of later cases were cut, and the total number of impending cases was down to 368,632, that meant the backlog of cases dating from after July 2000 went up slightly. Last year the British Transport Police was not due to clear its backlog by July 2004, though the inspectors say the BTP can meet the April 2002 target.
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As for those pre-July 2000 cases, 12 police forces ‘still have significant work ahead to achieve the April 2002 timescale’, the inspectors say. By the end of September 2001, 23 forces were inputting over 90 per cent of all arrest/summons details within 10 days. The inspectors say that the Police National Computer (PNC) ‘represents the most comprehensive and thus most important database of information to support operational policing’ . A national IT solution is not imminent, the inspectors add – but the original target of inputting arrest/summons reports within 24 hours was based on such an IT solution. A National Strategy for Police Information Systems including the PNC is four years behind schedule and is not due until 2005. Local IT systems are ‘seldom compatible between forces’, the inspectors say. The estimated annual throughput of the CRB will be around nine million certificates, the inspectors say, and ‘the extent to which CRB can discharge its core business is very much dependent upon PNC data quality’. Just as important, the inspectors say, is the weeding out of redundant records. However, the inspection team last summer found that ‘some chief officers had simply not considered the issue to be a sufficiently high priority to warrant the effort required. This had adversely affected the resources allocated to the problem.’ Lack of staff (civilians on the lowest pay grades) seems the problem. Inputting court results seemed to be bottom of the pile. As the inspectors put it: ‘A lack of concern bordering on apathy appeared to prevail in a number of forces in the post-court finalisation process.’ The inspectors quote the head of the PNC Bureaux of a medium-sized force who claimed the chief officer said not to complain – ‘it’s only a bit of typing’. Yet inefficiency in the inputting led to inefficiencies elsewhere in the criminal justice process, the inspectors pointed out. They added: ‘Responsibility for inputting court results onto PNC should rest firmly with the courts.’
