Crime Of The Century - A Chilling Look At Crime Statistics In The UK


lengths. Despite their emphasis on ethical policing senior officers are accused of hypocritically turning a ‘blind eye’ to these practices.


While detectives see resources being poured into the production of what are perceived to be spurious sanction detection rates, they struggle to find the time to investigate the more serious crimes on their case-loads. They find senior management’s low prioritisation of post- charge work particularly galling given that the quality and timeliness of the evidence they obtain will help to determine whether or not a case is subsequently discontinued or the prosecution successful.


Convictions are considered not to be of concern to senior management because, unlike sanction detections, they are not counted as a measure of police effectiveness under the current performance assessment regime. By the same token, the work of the quick-win squads is considered to be more highly valued than theirs. (General Office) GO CID cannot compete with these squads because the type of offences they investigate require more time and resources yet produce a lower yield of sanction detections.


The failure of senior management to resource GO CID adequately is attributed to their lack of experience of the criminal investigation process as well as their fixation with targets.


Unable to identify with the current priorities of their organisation, frustrated at the manner in which sanction detection rates are created and used to create the illusion of success in tackling crime and the undervaluing of skilled investigative effort leads detectives to feel marginalised and disillusioned.


Sanction detections


In every group a good proportion of the time was taken up discussing sanction detections, a subject which evoked some of the strongest criticism.


Sanction detections have been defined as 'A key step towards bringing an offence to justice, where a person was charged or summonsed; or an offender was cautioned, given a reprimand or a final warning; or an offender admitted a crime and asked for it to be taken into consideration at court; or a penalty notice for disorder was issued. Formal warnings for possession of cannabis are also included. SMTs can assess the performance of their BCUs against their own sanction detection targets and against other BCUs, using the most recent data from Iquanta, an Internet-based system. These data also receive ‘intensive scrutiny from central government.' (Neyroud and Disley, 2007: 560).


In many of the forces we visited the ACPO team use the data on sanction detections, and other performance data, in monthly meetings where BCU commanders are held to account for their performance and asked about their plans to address areas of underachievement. This Comstat approach is then cascaded down in meetings within the BCU.


Management’s use of this approach is much more aggressive on some BCUs than others. 37


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