Northamptonshire PEEL 2015

Northamptonshire Police’s effectiveness in preventing crime and anti-social behaviour and keeping people safe requires improvement. Poor direction to officers and assigning of tasks means the force may not be making the best use of its available resources for preventing crime and anti-social behaviour and activities may not be fully aligned with the priorities of the force.

The overall level of recorded crime in Northamptonshire increased by 13 percent in comparison with the previous year, compared with an increase of 4 percent across England and Wales. The force recognises that it needs to tackle high levels of violent crime. It is putting plans in place to address the matter in collaboration with specific partners.

Partnership arrangements at senior level are strong; however, operationally (at middle management level) joint problem-solving needs to be connected and agreed better. Some use, but inconsistently, is made of an evidence-based approach to tackling crime, but the force needs to do more to systematically learn from what works. A significant number of initiatives are in place across the county to combat a variety of problems but a lack of co-ordination and connectivity makes it difficult for the force to have an understanding of the impact they have.

Northamptonshire Police requires improvement in the way it investigates crime. HMIC is concerned that the way in which crime is allocated for investigation is causing unacceptable delays which puts at risk the force’s ability to properly investigate, gather the best evidence and ensure timely support for victims. We found that many crime investigations lacked effective initial supervision and some cases were being investigated by officers without the appropriate skills or experience. We found examples of delays in the recording of crimes. There are also backlogs in the force’s forensic examination of digital evidence from mobile phones and computers, which is causing delays in the investigation of high-tech crimes.

Victim satisfaction with Northamptonshire Police for the 12 months to 31 March 2015 is significantly lower than in the previous year.

Although the force is working well with other organisations to provide initiatives and schemes to divert offenders away from crime and the force has effective multi-agency arrangements in place to manage dangerous offenders, the integrated offender management programme is managing only those offenders involved in serious acquisitive crime. Given the high levels of violent crime in Northamptonshire and the priority placed on tackling it by the force, it is disappointing that this integrated approach is not being used to manage violent offenders to prevent re-offending.

Northamptonshire Police is trying to improve the service it provides in identifying vulnerable people and responding to them, so that the public can be confident that the force supports victims well. The force has good systems and processes in place to deal with vulnerability and risk at the initial point of contact. However, an improved awareness of vulnerability and empathy for victims by call-handlers is required to ensure that vulnerable victims feel fully engaged from the outset of their contact with police.

The use of the THRIVE approach to assess threat, risk and harm and the associated training the force has provided to its staff is designed to improve this situation but the benefits have yet to be seen and the force needs to improve its training for domestic abuse.

Investigations of missing and absent people and child sexual exploitation are of a good standard and the force has developed strong multi-agency risk assessment conference and multi-agency safeguarding hub models with good information-sharing and joint safeguarding activity. However, there are still several areas where more improvement is needed to ensure the service is consistent and vulnerable people are kept safe. While the force has effective processes to support the identification of vulnerable victims through a standardised risk assessment, officers often do not secure vital evidence.

The limited capacity and relative inexperience of investigative staff in the specialist domestic abuse investigation unit mean that the force is not safeguarding some high-risk victims of domestic abuse. Equally, the force’s investigations for standard and medium-risk cases are often below standard.

The absence of recent or fully developed multi-agency problem profiles hinders the force’s ability to respond to and safeguard vulnerable groups that are missing or absent, or subject to domestic abuse. This also affects the force’s preparedness to tackle child sexual exploitation.

The way Northamptonshire Police tackles serious and organised crime requires improvement. This is the first year HMIC has graded forces on their effectiveness at tackling serious and organised crime, including a force’s arrangements for ensuring that it can fulfil its national policing requirements, so no year-on-year comparison is possible.

The force needs to improve its understanding of the threat posed by serious and organised crime, and improve its multi-agency response to it, including work to prevent people from becoming involved in criminal groups and protecting communities from the harm they cause. The force recognises it needs to do more to work with partners to prevent serious and organised crime. The force is taking steps to better engage with local partner organisations in its approach to tackling organised crime groups (OCGs).

Although Northamptonshire is well served by the specialist capacity within the East Midlands Special Operations Unit (EMSOU) to tackle higher level serious and organised crime, the force itself has only limited specialist capacity, and it could do more to involve local policing teams and local partner organisations to bolster its response to serious and organised crime.

We found that the force has the necessary arrangements in place to ensure that responsibilities for targeting OCGs sit at the appropriate level, whether that be with the force or EMSOU. This approach has led to the successful dismantling of several OCG networks. However, the force could do more to raise awareness of OCGs with frontline officers and it should review the way in which it highlights the risks of organised crime to communities.

The force has well developed and strong arrangements in place to fulfil its national policing responsibilities, with chief officer oversight and strong links with regional and local partners with arrangements in place to test its plans.