Melanie Newman

The police watchdog for England and Wales has found failings in the recording of sex crime allegations at the vast majority of forces it has so far inspected this year.

Audits of 21 forces’ crime recording practices by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) found that 17 failed to correctly record reports of sexual offences – including assaults on children and vulnerable adults.

Reports on specific forces published yesterday, following an interim report released by HMIC in May, identified a pattern of behaviour in which officers delay recording of sexual offence claims and in some cases fail to record them as crimes at all. This means the complaints are never properly investigated.

The audits, conducted between February and August 2014, found that:

*Just 61% of sexual offence incidents that should have done been recorded as crimes by the Metropolitan Police were classified as such and “clear lines of enquiry” about alleged rapes were not actively pursued;

*Where rapes were recorded as crimes and then re-classified as “no-crimes”, this was done incorrectly in at least a fifth of cases at West Yorkshire, North Wales and Greater Manchester Police. 41% of Cleveland Police’s rape no-criming decisions were wrong;

*Police in South Yorkshire, who are currently under fire over failure to tackle child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, were still spending a “great deal of time” trying to disprove victims’ accounts rather than investigate their complaints. Officers attending rape victims were required to provide a “lengthy handover package” — not required for any other crime type — before a crime is recorded;

A spokeswoman for Rape Crisis England & Wales said the HMIC findings were “of grave concern”.

“Even more worrying is the fact that this is by no means the first such finding,” she added. “How many more such reports will it take before we see a real and marked improvement in criminal justice for survivors of rape and other forms of sexual violence?”

The next set of so-called “force-specific” reports from HMIC is expected later this autumn and will be followed by a final national inspection report containing recommendations.

Litany of failure

Last year’s parliamentary inquiry into police crime recording highlighted failures in regard to rape and sexual offences and led to police crime statistics being stripped of their status as official statistics.

Serving Metropolitan Police Constable James Patrick told the Public Administration Select Committee last November that his analysis of rape allegations recorded as “crime related incidents”and “no-crimes” by the force in 2013 had found that many of these reports should have been recorded as crimes.

The HMIC audit of the Met published yesterday, found rape recording had improved.

But the Met’s approach to other sexual offences left considerable room for improvement, the report found.

Of 106 sexual offences noted on “incident systems” that should have then been recorded as crimes, only 65 were.

And evidence of supervisory oversight was only present in 88 of the 164 sexual offence incidents reviewed.

Systemic failure

The new HMIC reports add weight to findings from the Bureau and claims from PC Patrick that large numbers of allegations that should have been recorded as crimes may never make it to force crime-recording systems.

Crucially, this means they are not counted in “no-crime” statistics which are used to indicate the extent to which sex crime complaints are not recorded.

Allegations first have to be recorded as crimes before they can be re-classified as “no-crimes”.

The new HMIC audits show that many sexual offence allegations remain classified as “incidents” and are never transferred to crime recording systems, and cannot therefore be classified as “no-crimes”.

Case study: Alleged rape attempt recorded as a civil matter

The HMIC reports also found many forces were failing to record sexual offence allegations at the earliest opportunity as required by crime recording rules.

Under Home Office counting rules police officers are required to record crimes as soon as they are satisfied that it is likely ‘on the balance of probability’ that an offence occurred, and within a maximum of 72 hours from first logging the incident.

Bureau research published in January found several forces that record sex crimes only after investigation, with the victim’s initial allegation — however credible — viewed as insufficient to justify a crime report.

This prompted a letter from Home Office ministers to all forces advising them to record rapes at the time the complaint is made.

But HMIC’s inspections, which began shortly after the letter was sent out, found many forces are still “investigating to record”.

Wiltshire Police: manipulating figures

Forces that use the “investigate to record technique” may appear better at tackling rape according to performance statistics.

In April 2013, a strategy document produced by the office of Suffolk’s Police and Crime Commissioner noted that Wiltshire Police was the top performing force for rape.

“[In Wiltshire] where victims withdraw complaints within 72 hours, crimes are not recorded. Suffolk’s stance is different with all crimes being recorded as soon as possible, where there is prima facie evidence that an offence occurred,” the document says.

The HMIC audit into Wiltshire Police published yesterday uncovered an internal report entitled A review of the recording and disposal of sexual offences 2012/13.

The internal report concluded that “Wiltshire Police has intentionally or inadvertently, manipulated the recording of sexual offences and thereby improved the perception of performance”. The report estimated the number of rapes not recorded at around 50.

A spokeswoman for Wiltshire said officers “recognised the seriousness of the concerns raised” and had “undertaken considerable training in crime recording procedures”.

Some cases mentioned in the HMIC report were now the subject of Independent Police Complaints Commission investigations, she added. “It would be inappropriate to comment further on these.”