Cleveland PEEL 2014

Although overall crime has fallen in Cleveland at a similar rate to the rest of the country over the past four years, crime rates remain higher than those of England and Wales.

Reducing crime and providing a better service to victims are clear priorities in Cleveland. Cleveland Police has an effective process for understanding and assessing the most important risks and threats to the communities; this includes working with local partners to share information and plan responses jointly.

The force works well to ensure that resources are targeted at tackling current and emerging risks, although HMIC found that sometimes short-term problems are driving operational activity and diverting the focus away from force and community priorities.

The force has strong and effective partnerships in place which are enabling information sharing to understand crime better and reduce it. We found examples of effective approaches leading to successful outcomes. Restorative justice is used effectively to divert young people from becoming criminalised. Joint working with partners to identify and manage the offenders causing the most harm in communities is good, as is the work the force is doing with partners to help troubled families.

There is a clear victim focus within the force. We found a strong commitment to improving the service to victims and, in particular, to the identification and management of vulnerable victims and safeguarding, both for adults and children.

The quality of investigations is satisfactory. We found some impressive examples of proactive work in specialist areas, for instance, in the investigation of child sexual exploitation. However, the force acknowledges that there is a need for greater consistency in the management of investigations.

Cleveland Police works effectively with other organisations through an integrated offender management approach to preventing reoffending among those prolific offenders posing most risk to the public.

The incidence of anti-social behaviour in Cleveland is very high. It is by far the highest rate per 1,000 population in the country, and more than twice the England and Wales rate. The area also saw one of the biggest increases in reported incidents in England and Wales last year. HMIC is concerned to find that the force does not have a clear understanding of the reasons behind this very high incidence or why it is continuing to increase, nor was the force able to demonstrate what it is doing to tackle the situation.

There is limited capacity within the neighbourhood teams to engage meaningfully with local communities, and to understand their concerns and work with them to find long term solutions to anti-social behaviour problems.

There is some evidence of good work with other organisations to divert young offenders and prevent anti-social behaviour problems from escalating.

The domestic abuse inspection found that, although there was much effective work being done to tackle domestic abuse, there were several areas for improvement for Cleveland Police to address before it could have confidence that a consistently good service was provided to victims of domestic abuse to minimise the risk to them.

The crime inspection found evidence that Cleveland was focusing resources on providing support to victims of domestic abuse and pursuing domestic abuse perpetrators. The inspection also reviewed Cleveland’s domestic abuse action plan and found the action plan to be comprehensive, following the national approach and evidencing activity in line with agreed national priorities. The action plan included direct reference to the HMIC recommendations, and there was clear evidence in the plan of the activity to improve the force response to domestic abuse.

The crime inspection found that the force had an effective process in place for identifying, monitoring and disrupting organised crime groups. Neighbourhood teams were involved in managing and disrupting the criminal activity of low-level crime groups in their areas.

There was no Strategic Policing Requirement inspection for this force.