Police recording rape as no crime - new figures

[AyeBelieveInTheHumanityOfMen]

I have a mountain of work to get through today, so am just going to post and run for now. Didn't want you all to miss this, though.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14844985

"New figures show wide disparities in the way that police forces in England and Wales record allegations of rape.

Data supplied to BBC News under the Freedom of Information Act shows the proportion of rapes dismissed as "no crime" varies between 2% and 30%.

Overall, the number of reports of rape classed as "no crime" has decreased.

The figures given to the BBC come four years after a watchdog warned that recorded crime figures for rape were skewed.

In its report, the Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate warned that some reports of rape were being wrongly classified by police forces. In turn, there was a danger that these mistakes inflated perceptions of false allegations.

At the time, police in England and Wales classified almost 16% of reports of rapes as "no crime". That figure has now fallen to under 12% - but data supplied by the Association of Chief Police Officers shows that the average hides wide variations.

While Gloucestershire Police recorded 2.4% of rapes as "no crime", the figure for Kent was 30%, three times the rate in 2009. Surrey Police's "no crime" figure was over 20%.

As a rule of thumb, Acpo says forces should look again if the proportion of rapes classed as "no crime" rises above 12%.

In a statement, Kent Police said the jump in its statistics came after a recent review of open cases.

'No crime' figures by force

2%: Gloucestershire
5%: Humberside
10%: Devon and Cornwall
15%: Norfolk
22%: Gwent
30%: Kent

Figures rounded and related to offences in year to March 2011

"As a result of this review, detailed enquiries carried out by officers resulted in some reports of rape being categorised as a 'no crime'. This resulted in above average 'no crimes' for the period April 2010 - March 2011.

"Periodic reviews of crime reports are an important part of maintaining the highest standards of investigation practices, and allow officers to review lines of inquiry thereby ensuring victims of sexual offences are supported effectively throughout the investigation and prosecution processes."

Surrey Police said: "In accordance with the Home Office counting rules, we may 'no crime' records if, and only if, there is additional verifiable information to satisfy the force crime registrar that there is no substantive rape.

"We continue to undertake this victim-focused approach and have worked with partner agencies such as the NHS to assist in the introduction of the Surrey sexual assault referral centre to provide victims with appropriate support."

But Lisa Longstaff, of Women against Rape, said the figures were insulting to victims.

"The whole practice of 'no criming' does send out a terrible message and the higher the no crime figure is in each area, the worse the message it sends out," she said.

The Freedom of Information figures also revealed variations in "sanction detections" - the police accounting term for cases where a suspect has been charged or cautioned.

National figures in summary

15,940 rapes in year to March 2011
12% classed as no crime
24% of all cases lead to conviction or caution
Proportion of convictions in cases that go to court is rising - up from 58% in 2009 to 71% in 2011

For two years, the figures for Lincolnshire Police have been below 13%. In contrast, Durham consistently achieved sanction detection rates three times higher.

Detective Inspector Sean Baxter of Lincolnshire Police said that sanction detections had risen since April 2011 and that they had also just launched the "Emerald Team", a dedicated rape investigations unit.

"The Emerald Team is made up of experienced hand-picked detectives and specially trained officers concerned solely with the investigation of rape offences from the cradle to the grave," he said.

"We expect a significant impact as a result of this new team that is working closely with the Crown prosecution team to enhance the investigation and prosecution of offenders in these emotive crimes."

In her review last year of how rape cases are handled, Baroness Vivien Stern criticised the repeated use of a figure suggesting that only 6% of rapes lead to convictions. Statistics show that a majority of rape prosecutions result in a conviction.

David Gee, a former advisor to the Home Office, said there was "such flexibility" in the crime recording rules that forces interpret them differently.

"But we need to look at not only the way it is recorded, but also the way so-called performance in this area is measured.

"This pre-determines police attitudes to allegations at the outset. If they know they are going to be criticised for recording a crime in good faith that is later not prosecuted, then there is a mind-set... there is no incentive to record."

I took it to mean they were only commenting on rapes and not any other crime. It may be that a crime is initially recorded as a rape and is then found to be another type of sexual assault. The rape gets "no crimed" and a new crime is recorded instead.

I may have got confused though.

OK I have looked it up

"sub·stan·tive   [suhb-stuhn-tiv] Show IPA
noun Grammar .
1.
a noun.
2.
a pronoun or other word or phrase functioning or inflected like a noun.
Plain English Online
Online Plain English Training, special offers and big discounts.
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adjective
3.
Grammar .
a.
pertaining to substantives.
b.
used in a sentence like a noun: a substantive adjective.
c.
expressing existence: ?to be? is a substantive verb.
4.
having independent existence; independent.
5.
belonging to the real nature or essential part of a thing; essential.
6.
real or actual.
7.
of considerable amount or quantity."

I think they mean that they only mark it as a crime if there is significant evidence.

Oh look point 6 real or actual

So Surrey police are saying that they are no-criming if they don't think it's a "real" rape AKA "rape rape".

Would like to add my thoughts to this if i may as a detective. The home office counting rules is a complex document which is widely open to nterpretation. The issues around recording all crime, not just rape are pnes which the police have asked the goverment to address. In addition the pressures that are put on police forces in relation to statistics are ridiculous.

This in my opinion is the real reason why forces are reluctant to actully record a crime. However if n incident is reported to te police it will be recorded as a crime related incident and has to be investigated.in my experience there are a number of reasons why the incidents o not recorded as a crime. There have been a number of incidents reported as rape where people have gone out, returned later thn their partner expects, they have had sex with someone whilst on the night out, and report this as rape. An investigation starts and the police have arrested the male n question.

Statstics can be made to how whatever you want. I work in an inner city and can homestly say it has improved dramatically. When i first joined, the sex workers ould never report a rape, now they will come forward. A major problem in successful convictions is Cps but they work within their own constraints

Sharon,

The actual conviction rates of those cases that proceed to prosecution are quite high while the rate of those reported that proceed to prosecution in the first instance seems extremely low.
As a police officer, what systemic problems do you feel need addressing in order to lead to more prosecutions?

I can see that you might occasionally get situations as you describe, but surely that would be a) a small number and b) fairly evenly spread across forces. Those variations are huge 2-30% are huge and the 30% is really worrying. I know that stats aren't always as straightforward as they appear (I used to work in the NHS) but there has to be somethign going on there.

Sharon on a thread talking about Kent having a 30% "no crime" rate for rape, I find your comment really distasteful. Bringing up your one example of a woman lying in relation to 1 in 3 in Kent being no crimed is disturbing. Also as a police officer I find that disturbing.

I mean that you as a police officer look at 30% no crime rate in Kent and your contribution is that women lie.

And that is something I find disturbing.

I would imagine that if you went out for the night and were raped, then you would be home a bit later than planned,

"no criming" is really falling at the first hurdle, isn't it? The term itself chills me. I still didn't win the lottery, so my Civil Cases for Rape Victims fund only has about 50p in it. Cross your fingers for Tuesday.

how does this compare with other crimes?
ie, if you call the police because something in your house has gone missing, so you think it's been stolen, but then it 'turns up' (either under suspicious consequences or not), does that get recorder as 'no crime'?
similarly, if you see someone trying to break into a house, so you call the police & tell them there's a break-in, but it turns out the person gave up & ran away after only causing a little damage, not actually breaking in & stealing, how is that dealt with?

Are there figures for those scenarios, which we could compare? Then it would give an indication of whether rape is particularly prone to 'no crime' or not.

cos if it's a point being made about lack of resources, then surely ALL crimes in Kent should have a 30% 'no crime' record?

You'd then need to cross-ref with resources per population etc to see if this was the case, and compare with the counties that have a 2% rate.

I don't know, kickassangel. I'm not sure that your analogies work, unless they are being no-crimed as rape but prosecuted as another offence. These are reported rapes that are being no crimed because of lack of evidence (have the police done a thorough job of the forensics?), withdrawn statements (have the police investigated if pressure is being put on the victim? As the victim is a witness, have witness intimidation procedures been followed?), a tiny amount of false allegations and whatever other reasons, some of which must be due to local force attitudes, otherwise there would not be such disparity in the figures. I haven't got my stats head on today, but how does no-criming potentially impact on the stats relating to convictions (the 71% figure) etc?

I'll have a cup of tea and have a dig around.

from kent police website

"10. No crimes
10.1. No crimes relate to crimes already recorded, and should not be mistaken for Incident Reports that are Not Crimed.
10.2. Once a report of a crime has gone through the 72 hour validation process, and deferred to undetected, it can only be ?No Crimed? if one of the following four criteria is satisfied:
10.2.1. Where, following a report of an incident which has subsequently been reported as a crime, additional verifiable information comes to light which determines that no crime has actually been committed.
10.2.2. If the crime as alleged constitutes part of a crime already recorded, i.e. a criminal damage to a shop window was recorded, but it subsequently transpires property has been stolen from the display. In these circumstances the crime of burglary would be recorded and the already recorded offence of criminal damage should be ?No Crimed?.
10.2.3. If the reported incident was recorded as a crime in error, i.e. an offence of arson is recorded in respect of an abandoned burnt out vehicle, but enquiries fail to establish an owner for the vehicle. This should be treated as crimed in error, as would be the case where Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) endorse an MG3 with no evidence of an offence having been committed. In these circumstances both reports should be ?No Crimed?.
(Where the CPS advice is ?insufficient evidence to prosecute?, this is not sufficient to ?no crime? an allegation ? the crime report must remain undetected.)
10.2.4. The crime was committed outside the jurisdiction of the police force in which it is reported. A number of locations on our county borders have Kent addresses but actually fall within the policing boundaries of neighbouring force areas, which often results in crime reports being attributed/allocated, and incorrectly routed, i.e. part of Westerham is covered by Surrey Police, Frant by Sussex, Biggin Hill, Orpington and Bexley by the Metropolitan Service. "

The bit I have emboldened (10.2.2) rules out the idea that the rape is being discounted but other lesser crimes are proceeded with. This part seems to say that the most serious crime on the list is the one that doesn't get no-crimed - so short of the person being murdered as well the rape complaint will be the one that "stays". And apart from that the only way to no crime it is if verifiable evidence comes to light that the offence has not been committed.

So according to Kent's own rules, 1 in 3 women who report rape to them is a liar.

Flabbergasting.

It would be interesting for an investigation to look at the reports and see if the "verifiable evidence" that no crime was committed is really there.

SQ: the link Proles has left is worth a read, especially in terms of Kent. According the information provided here, this 30% figure is partly explicable by the fact that the Kent police in an attempt to tidy up their statistics "no crimed" a number of still open and unresolved cases. I have no idea if this make women in Kent feel much better, but it might explain some of the disparities.

And also, the other reports linked on Cath Elliot's blog post are also very interesting (but anger fuelling) reads.

What i was trying to explain rather badly was that the law is complex enough but when you try to throw in the home office counting rules the wters are muddied even further. You can produce statistics that how whatever you wnt.

You may regard my example as poor taste, however to show how an inident nd then converted to a crime is relevant. In a number of cases the women have genuinely admitted they lied to save face with their partner. This will initially hve been recorded as a sexual offence but then written off.

This is a tiny proportion and i wasnt trying to say women lie. As i also said in my previous post we now have many sex workers who finally DO have the confidence to report rape.

Kickass you have hit the nail on the head, you need to look at these sts in conjunction with all other crimes to get a true reflection

Also they may be no crimed if the victim states thy have been raped and the foce policy is to submit a crime straight away, other forces will use the full 72 hours allowed under national crime recording prior to submitting any crime. If another offence is then found to have been committed once the vicim s video interviewed then it will chnge the figures. It is so much better for the vicim as thy only have to give their account once on vido, this gets played in court and they get cross examined on this. There re other specal measures available to them which greatly assists in giving evidence.

I think this has probably assisted with conviction rates increasing

The phrase substantive rape is very out of date but was used to describe rape as opposed to digital penetration, rape per anus, etc which are now obviously all rape. Not heard it said for years.

Sharon if that is what substantive rape means I don't understand how it makes sense in the contxt he said it?

He used the "substantive rape" thing to say that when things were not substantive rapes they no crimed them. But according to exiting laws the other things you talk about are rape so how would they be no criming them IYSWIM?

cat I thought that stuff about relooking at old cases was a pretty rubbish reason. I can't think it likely that more women would have lied in the past than now IYSWIM so it doesn't seem to make sense.

I think that the forces who had the very high levels should have been apologising and saying they would look into what was happening rather than making excuses personally.

SQ: but I think there was no relooking into old cases; simply the writing off of old, unresolved but still open cases. The net effect of this is to make the statistics imply that in these cases the woman was not telling the truth; when in reality they are not resolved and no further evidence was found in order to continue. In any case it doesn't refect well on how the Kent police force deals with rape victims it simply explains the difference in figures between constabularies, iyswim.

Thanks for the quote, SQ. "No criming" was pretty much invented by Kent Police afaik. It was a painted-into-a-corner initiative, responding to multiple govt pressures to [a] reduce unresolved crimes; [b] reduce overall crime rates; [c] cut policing costs; [d] increase police reporting. Kent introduced a "No Crime Team" (you couldn't make it up), tasked with investigating old crimes and deciding whether there was a crime to pursue. The preferred answer is in the name of the initiative! Here's an article from the Torygraph in 2008.
Extract:
In Kent, the force that pioneered the so-called "intelligence-led policing" which became the model that all others follow, senior officers have now come up with another wizard wheeze to reduce the amount of crime in the Garden of England. It's called "no criming" ? a novel and, apparently, highly successful weapon in Kent Police's armoury.

A team of officers are tasked with no criming. Unresolved incidents, thefts and attacks on property are revisited months after the events themselves and the officers rexamine them to see if there could be plausible, non criminal explanations. It appears that this is now official policy within the force.

Some of the explanations that the "no crime" investigations turn up are ? er ? unusual. An unsolved incident in Folkestone back in the summer in which officers had originally believed that an apartment window had been broken when somebody fired an air gun at it was reclassified as an accident. The official "no crime" explanation? A confused seagull had crashed into the window and caused the damage with its beak.

Why is police time and resource being spent on this policy of plausible deniability? How can our criminal justice system have gone so wrong that not only does it fail to investigate the vast majority of criminal activity in this country, but elements within are now actively seeking to reclassify what were originally reported crimes as accidents?

One cannot but help feel that "no criming" is just the tip of the iceberg, that the scale of the total deceit about crime is so vast and so systemic that to reveal it would cause the final collapse in confidence in our police and our justice system.

I can't quickly find an example of what proportion of other serious offences are "no crimed" by Kent police, though I suppose it must be somewhere. In view of the fact that our police are now better rewarded for filing happy reports than for tackling crime, I suspect many categories of crime are also "no crimed" at a rate of 30% or more.

That doesn't make it any better, or us any safer. I just think this is probably not so much about discounting rapes specifically, as about our absurd national policies. It is an outrage.

Sorry, in case that wasn't clear:
~ The government wants to hear that crime rates have fallen.
~ The most cost-effective way for the police to achieve this is to re-classify crimes as "not crimes". To this end, they have special re-classification teams.
~ The easiest crimes to re-classify are ones where there was no witness or fingerprints, etc (vandalism) swiftly followed by crimes where the only witness is the complainant, who has washed the evidence off.

Kafka would have loved it.

Argh, I must be tired ... should be ...
crimes where the only witnesses are the complainant and the accused, whose stories conflict
I got a bit bogged down with stranger rapes there

sounds just like new speak in 1984.