One in five crimes, including sexual offences, reported to Lincolnshire police were not documented

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Nearly 10,000 crimes, including violent crimes, sexual offences and domestic abuse, have gone unrecorded by a UK police force over the course of a year, the police watchdog has said.

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) found that nearly one in five crimes reported to Lincolnshire police were undocumented, potentially leaving some victims shut out from support services.

The issue was “of very great concern”, the inspector of constabulary, Zoë Billingham, said. “Although safeguarding measures were in place for many of the victims of crimes, there was little evidence of investigations being undertaken where the crime had not made it on to the books. This is particularly true for cases of domestic abuse.

“The importance of correctly recording crime cannot be overlooked, or simply passed off as a bureaucratic measure. If a force does not correctly record crime, it cannot properly understand the demand on its services, nor provide support to those who need it most.”

Victims can only access certain support services when a crime is recorded and a lack of accurate statistics can leave senior officers with insufficient information when allocating resources.

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The watchdog examined records from the period 1 June to 30 November 2017 and estimated that about 9,400 reported crimes were not recorded per year – more than 18% of the total reported to Lincolnshire police.

The report said a “large proportion of common assaults and malicious communication offences and a small number of more serious crimes, including sexual offences, grievous bodily harm and rape”, were not recorded.

Of particular concern was violent crime, where only 72.7% of reported incidents were recorded, with some crimes of grievous bodily harm and wounding where victims were badly injured not being properly documented.

“This means that on too many occasions, the force is failing victims of crime,” the watchdog said.

Lincolnshire police’s deputy chief constable, Craig Naylor, said measures had been put in place to improve recording and insisted the force’s “service has not slipped”.



He said: “We are deeply disappointed by this report and absolutely committed to ensuring we resolve the problem quickly and effectively. We have made mistakes and we will not shirk from accepting and correcting them.”

Naylor added: “There are no ‘missed’ victims or offenders – what we have missed is the correct procedure for recording them.”

A force spokeswoman said many of the cases in question were ongoing inquiries where previous, historical incidents had not been correctly recorded – for example, if a victim of domestic violence reports crimes stretching back years.

In a separate report, Humberside police were graded as “requires improvement” for recording reported crime. They were estimated to have failed to record 14.3% of the total crimes reported to the force per year. These included sexual offences, public order and violence offences.