Target-culture in Kent police

Nigel Williams, 4 July 2013

In June 2013, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary reported on Police crime recording in Kent. Two major concerns triggered the report:

• ‘No-criming’ 30% of reported rapes in 2010/11, compared to a national rate of 12% that year.
• Arresting five Maidstone-based detectives in an anti-corruption investigation in November 2012.

Out of the report came seven recommmendations, starting well:

• The Investigation Management Unit should investigate itself to discover why one in ten crimes were being recorded incorrectly.
• The Kent force should ensure that all its no-crime decisions meet the required standard.
• Kent’s cannabis-warning form should explain the implications to the offender.
• The force should educate staff about the forms of disposal open to them.

Then the recommendations get a bit vague:

• Supervision should be used to improve consistency
• Continuous improvement should be defined and measured
• An effective process is needed to monitor the impact of changes to the performance framework.

One unequivocal statement to come from the report concerned the work of the staff answering the telephones at the first point of contact. The call-takers in the force control room provide ‘a high-quality service to victims‘. Those staff are less subject to the performance-related culture that has been imposed on the rest of the police force, and yet they provide an admirable service in difficult circumstances.

As for the rest of the service, the incentive is clear in the performance targets for the whole force: ‘Reducing crime and effectively dealing with anti-social behaviour‘ is measured on ‘The number of recorded crimes‘ with a target of a 2 per cent reduction. Subsequent targets also measure ‘The Percentage of recorded crime that is detected’ and ‘The Percentage of violent crime that is detected‘. The potential for manipulating the recording process to help achieve these targets is obvious. An extra target, ‘To improve the percentage of victims of crime who are satisfied with the actions taken‘ should guard against abuses. However, the concept of “no crime” provides a pretext for ignoring the most dissatisfied.

‘No-criming’, officially termed ‘declassification’, is a reasonable process for cases such as reporting a wallet stolen then having it returned, cash and all, by a lost property office. No law has been broken here so the case is considered ‘no crime’. Nevertheless there is a strict procedure to verify that these truly are not crimes. In January 2011, Kent police declassified 178 reported crimes of violence and 18 reported rapes. For 2011/12, the rate in Kent, 4.3% was well above the average for England and Wales of 3%. Even after procedural changes, fifteen out of fifty-eight cases examined in January 2013 still turned out to have been declassified incorrectly. Where crimes were recorded, the report went on to find that serious offences such as burglary were sometimes resolved with no more than a caution. Hence the fourth recommendation to teach staff what disposals are available.

To meet detection targets, officers were seeking out cannabis users, so the report found. These crimes were detected as soon as they were recorded so caused an automatic improvement in the detection rate, even if the offences had minimal impact on the rest of society.

The whole report is an indication of the malign effect of imposing performance targets on the police. Far from encouraging police to improve, the targets require extra resources solely to monitor whether they are applied correctly. There are calls in the report for continuous improvement, consistency,  a framework, an effective process. Without the targets, we would have to trust to police professionalism and sense of duty. The high standards of the team answering 999 calls suggests that should be enough.