Police crime figures – all 43 forces fiddling the stats

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The Guardian reports that:

An official investigation into the integrity of police recorded crime figures in all 43 forces in England and Wales is expected to find “a degree of fiddling”, some of it owing to dishonesty, the police watchdog, Tom Winsor, has told MPs.

But Winsor, who is Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary (HMIC), said he had no expectations that the inquiry, which is to issue an interim report in the spring, would conclude that the inaccurate recording of crime by police was owing to “institutional corruption”.

(Perhaps one of our readers can explain this to The Haze? Not a single police force can manage to report their crime figures without dishonestly fiddling them but somehow this is definitely not an example of “institutional corruption”. The distinction eludes us!)

Thank heavens for the whistle-blower PC James Patrick, even Met Commissioner  Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe now has to sdmit that  “on the whole there’s a truth we need to hear”.

The Met commissioner said an internal inquiry had been launched into 20 claims made by Patrick, which would report in three to six months’ time. The police officer who went to the MPs with his claims is also facing disciplinary proceedings for alleged gross misconduct (what a coincidence!- Haze) , but Hogan-Howe said he would not be suspended while the investigations were carried out.

Patrick has claimed the Met manipulated crime figures to meet its performance targets and crimes such as sexual offences were understated in official figures by up to 25%.

Hogan-Howe said ensuring recorded crime figures were accurate was a constant challenge and some of Patrick’s claims were worthy of further investigation.

The Haze says:

This is a truly shocking story and goes some way to explaining why the public perception of crime and official figures never seem to tally up.

The perception that unemployment and poverty are not linked to rises in crime is something that the usual suspects have been falling over themselves to say – but what is the reality behind the officially offered police statistics and from whence does the political pressure to manipulate them come from?

Stay tuned