Written evidence from the Police and Crime Commissioner for Derbyshire [CST0063]

I am writing to you following your request for information for the Public Administration Select Committee around Crime Statistics. Please accept my sincere apologies for the delay in getting this information to you. We thought we had replied, but it appears we hadn’t.

In your letter you asked the following questions:

What, if any, targets do you set for your police force?

There are no numerical targets within the Police and Crime Plan 2012/17 for Derbyshire. This is a deliberate decision as it is our belief that numerical targets can lead to perverse or unintended consequences. By this we mean that if we were to set a crime reduction target of 10% for bicycle theft this could result in officers concentrating on bicycle theft in order to meet the target and not picking up on other emerging or relevant areas of crime as they were not named as specific targets. The approach adopted in Derbyshire has been to drive continuous improvement in performance which is driven through a robust performance framework that identifies key risks and manifesto priorities (Objective 5 of the Police and Crime Plan). This approach is similar to that adopted previously by the Police Authority and has helped deliver 10 years of crime reduction in Derbyshire, with a 16% reduction in recorded crime in 2011/12.

What impact do you think this has on police recording crime practices?

As we do not have numeric targets within the Police and Crime Plan it mitigates the unintended consequences I outlined in my response above and removes any consideration of meeting or missing targets within crime recording decisions.

How do you assure yourself that the recorded crime figures for your area are correct?

Headline performance data and figures are monitored at a monthly public meeting, our Strategic Governance Board. We have a performance analyst within the PCC’s staffing team who briefs the PCC and I on the data presented and highlighting any concerns about the data, including any concerns about accuracy. The PCC/Force’s Joint Audit, Risk and Assurance Committee (JARAC) has a standing agenda item on data quality which offers assurance on data integrity. (A copy of the most recent report/appendices is attached to this letter.) We also gained assurance of the data integrity through the HMIC independent inspection in January 2012 and are looking forward to the outcomes of the forthcoming inspection HMIC are due to undertake in the coming months. This external scrutiny and oversight will highlight any issues to be taken forward and will, I am sure, confirm our trust in the statistics.

To what extent can you trust the crime statistics for your area?

We believe that the approach we have taken to target setting within Derbyshire has established a culture wherein any temptation to manipulate crime statistics has been removed. Our regular, public scrutiny of crime data supports our Police and Crime Plan objective to deliver continual improvement in performance and the most recent HMIC inspection of crime data (albeit nearly 2 years ago) gave assurance that recording practices in Derbyshire were of a high standard and that we could gain assurance/trust in the statistics.

I hope that this answers your questions, should you require any additional information, please do not hesitate to get in touch and we will be happy to provide this.

January 2014