RCIPS to present crime clean-up rates by 2024

(CNS): The 2023 crime report could be the last time that the RCIPS presents its annual statistics without offering some form of detection or crime clean-up rate. Despite the public interest in and the importance of solving crime and bringing perpetrators to justice, the RCIPS has so far been unable to answer questions about how well it is doing at not just arresting suspects but also laying charges and getting people to court.

For years, CNS has asked about how and when the RCIPS planned to communicate detection rates, but successive police commissioners have suggested that this is too challenging to measure because there are so many elements to the criminal justice system, and there had to be a definition of ‘solved crime’ from their perspective.

But last year, when they released the 2022 crime statistics, the management team indicated they were working on a way to report on charges and detection. When asked again this year, Detective Superintendent Pete Lansdown said the RCIPS had finished writing “a crime recording and detection policy” and was now in the process of training officers how to use and properly record what is to be considered a detection.

He said, “It can’t be done overnight” because there are so many potential outcomes to every arrest, and explained the need to be explicit on how and when to measure what is a detected crime.

“It’s a journey we are currently on,” Lansdown said. However, he was hopeful that by the time the RCIPS presents the 2024 crime statistics, they will include some form of clean-up rate. “We have taken ownership of this now, and we are moving it forward,” he added.

This year, the RCIPS recorded 3,955 crimes and arrested 2,177 people, but it does not record the number of people charged with a crime. Lansdown said there had been challenges with recording charges because one person could be charged with numerous crimes while several people can be charged with just one, so deciding how to count who has been charged is not as simple as it may seem.

He noted that counting the number of files submitted to the Department of Public Prosecutions would not necessarily reflect the detection rate because police often submit files to seek legal advice rather than to ask the prosecutors for clearance to charge.

In some cases, files are submitted by officers seeking to charge a suspect, but they are returned with directions for further work and then re-submitted. He said that so far this year, the RCIPS has already submitted over 400 files to the DPP, a figure he calculated by chance as a result of other work he was doing.

While there is no record of detection rates, in 2023, there were 57 robberies and attempted robberies, 89 sexual offences and 41 gun cases among the 3,955 crimes recorded. There were also four murders, and Lansdown said people had been charged in all four. Shaun Antonio Jackson (23) is now serving a life sentence for the murder of Randy Kelsey Robinson after trial this year, while the other three cases are set to go to trial this year.

A number of charges were laid last year for robbery, Lansdown said. In other robbery cases, while the police were not able to secure the evidence against suspects they believe are guilty of this crime, because they charged people for other crimes, taking them off the streets, the rate of robberies slowed down.

Lansdown has also stated that while the police have not been held accountable yet for their clean-up rate in specific numbers, the fact that the jail is consistently over capacity reflects the fact that the police are still getting criminals and suspects off the streets.