Meeting documents

The Police and Crime Commissioner will present the report.

The Police and Crime Commissioner informed the Panel that his Police and Crime Plan set out the following aims for addressing, Police Ethics and Reform:

•          Improved routes into services from police and other agencies for victims and witnesses who require support

The PCC referred to the launch of the Victims First service and the initial teething problems caused by staffing problems; mainly caused by the delays of vetting new recruits. This had now been addressed. In the first 6 months of this current financial year, the Hub had received referrals of 2,226 victims and had provided support to 889 people. In response to a question, the PCC reported that not all people were referred because there were occasions where people who contacted the Hub just required support and advice.

Reference was made to Community Safety Fund initiatives where funding was provided to Community Safety Partnerships and the examples provided in the report which provide funding for Youth Offending Services, Youth Justice Services and to vulnerable young people and adults linked to organised crime groups.

•          Clarification of processes for referring on issues that sit best with other authorities

The PCC made reference to incidents of "101 calls" to the Police which particularly increased on a Friday afternoon, partially because many other authorities and agencies were closed. The Police were expected to pick these calls up and this impacted on the service.     

•          Encourage accelerated up-take of new technology in order to prevent, reduce and detect crime

The PCC made reference to the failure to adopt GPS tagging on recently released criminals from prisons. In his opinion, this would drastically cut down re-offending rates for crimes such as serious violence, serious sexual crimes or serious theft or burglary. The technology was available to tag recently released offenders and introducing this would have a dramatic effect on re-offending.  The PCC reported that funding had been put into this. The Chief Constable reported that there were two elements to tagging; those people who had voluntarily agreed to be tagged and there were a number of these devices used in police areas within Thames Valley. Also there were pilots being run in conjunction with the Ministry of Justice, however, there were concerns regarding the cost of this, as there would be savings for the Ministry of Justice, but there was uncertainty regarding who would fund the scheme as it would create additional workload and costs for the Police.       

Reference was made to an initial predictive analytics project, which was a programme which predicted where crime was going to happen. The Chief Constable reported that work had taken place with Children’s Services at Oxfordshire and the project looked at predicting the types and profiles of young people who could commit crimes. Data and analytics were used and the initial feedback had been positive. There were some ethical issues with using such data profiling / artificial intelligence but there was lots of useful data which could be used to help in the fight against crime. Working with partners, predictions could be made on potential individuals who may commit crimes.

•          Development of Strategies to improve perceptions of police among young people

The PCC referred to the successful bid for funding for the Early Intervention Funding, with the Thames Valley, being one of only a third of Police Forces who had been successful in receiving funding. The Panel placed on record their thanks to the PCC for the work which had been carried out in submitting the successful bid. Reference was made to the good collaborative work which had taken place with the CSPs in the area, in submitting the bid.   

RESOLVED

That the report and the update provided by the Police and Crime Commissioner be welcomed and noted.