Cambridgeshire PEEL 2015

Cambridgeshire Constabulary is good at preventing crime and anti-social behaviour and keeping people safe. HMIC made a similar judgment in its crime inspection in 2014 when the constabulary was also judged as good at reducing crime and preventing offending.

Constabulary priorities reflect a commitment to prevention, supporting victims, partnership working and keeping people safe. This commitment is well understood throughout the constabulary, and the constabulary ensures that generally well-trained officers are assigned to local neighbourhoods who focus on preventing problems from occurring or from escalating.

The constabulary has the right systems and processes in place at constabulary and neighbourhood level, alongside a range of powers and tactics, to work together with partner organisations to tackle anti-social behaviour and keep people safe.

The constabulary could improve how it understands, evaluates and shares evidence of ‘what works’, but overall the public can feel confident that the constabulary is working well to prevent crime and anti-social behaviour, and keep people safe.

Cambridgeshire Constabulary’s approach to investigating crime and managing offenders requires improvement. This is a worse position than we found in our 2014 crime inspection when HMIC judged the constabulary as good at investigating crime and managing offenders. Processes for the allocation of complex and non-complex crime work well; but the quality of supervision is not good enough. The constabulary needs to improve its approach to ensuring that crime investigations are of a consistently good quality so that it can effectively fight crime and bring more offenders to justice. Although many cases have an adequate investigation plan, we found inconsistencies in the levels of effective supervision and supervisory involvement in decision making. The constabulary is aware that it needs to improve and has put in place a number of measures to address this. There are also backlogs in the constabulary’s forensic examination of digital evidence from mobile phones and computers, which is causing delays in the investigation of crimes.

Despite very good overall satisfaction rates, the constabulary needs to improve its ‘follow-up’ to ensure victims of crime know how their investigation is progressing. Forensic and digital specialists are used effectively to support investigations, and improvements are being made to the prioritisation process for submissions.

The constabulary identifies vulnerable offenders and makes efforts to divert them from further offending. The constabulary’s processes for working with repeat and dangerous offenders work well.

Cambridgeshire Constabulary generally provides a good service in identifying vulnerable people and responds well to them. However, in some areas improvement is needed to ensure the service is consistent and that vulnerable people are protected from harm and kept safe.

Protecting vulnerable people is a priority for the constabulary, and staff understand and share this commitment. The constabulary has invested additional resource in specialist teams to safeguard vulnerable victims, such as domestic abuse and child sexual exploitation victims and missing children. However, the specialist resources are limited and workloads are outstripping the capacity to provide a consistently good response.

We found improvements since last year in dealing with domestic abuse and missing children cases, although there is still room for improvement. Officers attending domestic abuse incidents work well to assess risk and protect victims. However, HMIC is concerned that a lack of positive action, use of police powers and an inconsistent approach to the collection of evidence, is putting vulnerable victims at risk and is undermining their confidence in the police to keep them safe.

The constabulary has made a good start in ensuring that it is well prepared to tackle child sexual exploitation and must now build on this initial approach with its partners.

Cambridgeshire Constabulary is good at identifying and tackling serious and organised crime, including its arrangements for ensuring that it can fulfil its national policing responsibilities. This is the first year HMIC has graded forces on their effectiveness in these areas, so no year-on-year comparison is possible.

It is working well with local and national partner organisations and other forces in the region to prevent serious and organised crime. The constabulary has a well-developed understanding of the threat posed by serious and organised crime across Cambridgeshire, through comprehensive analysis of serious and organised crime at district level. The constabulary is part of an effective multi-agency response to it, including some work to prevent people from becoming involved. It has access to an extensive range of specialist capabilities provided by the Eastern Region Special Operations Unit, to help it to tackle serious and organised crime.

The constabulary has a well co-ordinated and effective method for managing organised crime groups, there are good processes to identify and disrupt the activities of these criminal groups. There is some good early work with schools to identify vulnerable young people who may be at risk of being drawn into serious and organised crime.

The constabulary has robust arrangements in place to satisfy itself that it is fulfilling its national policing responsibilities.