The Kent business crime partnerships crime information network (CIN),which is used by many BCRPs (business crime reduction partnerships) in the county now has a new function – Kent Crime Link.
It became apparent during business crime seminars that partnership crime managers were reporting that they were recording more and more offenders from partnerships in other towns in the county.
Karen Griffiths of Dover Partnership Against Crime said: ‘Each user of the password protected CIN could enter the name of a suspect and all persons of that name would appear on the site. But if a partnerships did not know the name of an offender, or had just a few details or a photo, in most cases the crime manager would record them as unknown.’
Karen, and Mick Kilbride from Ashford Partnership Against Crime decided it was time to develop a system that would enable BCRPs to have the ability to share information and be data protection compliant. Working with a local IT company – the Whyte Studio – they developed an additional service called Kent Crime Link.
This is a separate data base within the CIN data base which allows users to record their top ten travelling offenders. There are five categories: shoplifters, prolific offenders, unknown offenders, purse dippers and vehicles.
BCRPs who have the CIN system can copy their travelling offender information into the new Kent Crime Link section. To enter the Kent Crime Link site the co-ordinator must agree to comply with the JAPAN rules (Justified, Authorised, Proportional, Auditable, Necessary).
Once a user has agreed to this, they are taken to a screen containing photos/names of offenders. To obtain further information on any offender they must state why they require this information. This criterion also applies to those wishing to add information to the link.
Karen Griffiths said: ‘The new system has been successful and we have already been able to identify a number of offenders that we were unaware of as travelling offenders. This means we will be able to provide the police with better information which will help them to decide on the appropriate course of action. We can also provide police and the CPS with other antecedent information from our records. The crime information system currently has 1410 offenders and 1252 incidents shared between eight partnerships. It is anticipated that more county partnerships and police will join.’
