Reducing Bureaucracy in Policing - Home Office

Crime & Incident Recording, Custody, Case Building, Missing Persons,
Domestic Abuse, National Intelligence Model (NIM), Performance
Development reviews (PDR) & RIPA Authority’s .
In previous reports I have highlighted the need for ACPO to apply a more proportionate and
measured approach to streamline and rationalise all these key processes. I welcome the work
recently undertaken by HMIC and ACPO to remove duplication and over-working.
Process mapping - Most systems and processes have been mapped in one form or another
across forces, but the requisite rationalisation, cultural shift and challenge has not necessarily
been undertaken.For example, Project Athena referred to in the technology section of this report
have mapped 4 key processes, each is an amalgam of the 9 collaborating forces, and written at a
level and in a language that all forces can identify with. I do not under-estimate the amount of time
it has taken to achieve this level of consensus and it will be important, as this work develops to
further streamline the processes in a way that delivers the greatest efficiencies rather than an
acceptable compromise of processes across the forces concerned. To maximise the potential of
re-engineering processes it is important to look at the system as a whole and remove all aspects
that add no value to the overall purpose.
Where trust and responsibility is not appropriately devolved excessive numbers of gatekeepers
(decision-makers) are added to systems and processes,extending the process and creating
additional cost and unnecessary delay (bureaucracy). It also fails to place responsibility as near as
possible to where the impact is felt. For example, where poor performance or mistakes have been
made (incorrect or incomplete record keeping, wrong classification, missing evidence) additional
gatekeepers have been added (call handling, case building) to put it right, rather than place
responsibility on the officer or member of staff to get it right first time and holding them to account.
When systems and processes are streamlined and rationalised consideration needs to be given to
where decisions are taken and what value each decision point adds to the process. For example a
student officer investigating a simple burglary told me his work was reviewed and directed by nine
different supervisors, each one needing to demonstrate their value by adding a further requirement
on the student officer, who then had to demonstrate (in writing) he had completed all the ‘actions’.
Trust and hold to account, design in quality assurance and inspection at the point where the
decisions should be taken not across the whole system.
Focus Crime & Incident Recording
In my Full Report I set out the arguments for accurate and trusted crime and incident recording.In
its simplest form, all reported crimes and incidents need to be accurately and proportionately
recorded to aid investigation/response and audit (accountability).
The National Crime and Incident Recording Standards (NCRS, NSIR) support this in a
standardised and consistent way,for example a burglary categorised in the same way wherever
committed. Neither standard prevents crimes or incidents from being recorded in a proportionate
way.
There is an arguement for rationalisation of the notifiable offences list 13 (NOL) and broadening
the categories of crimes required to be reported and recorded nationally. Some propose a split
between serious and less serious, others the adoption of up to ten broad categories of crime. I
believe the current list, with over 1,300 definitions of offences, collects greater detail than is
necessary and on balance believe less but broader national categories could be developed. The
13 Notifiable offences covers a wide range of offences from murder to minor theft and are published nationally as police
recorded crime statistics
25