Gwent PEEL 2018
Legitimacy
How legitimately does the force treat the public and its workforce?
To what extent does the force treat all of the people it serves with fairness and respect?
Gwent Police requires improvement at treating the public fairly.
The workforce recognises the importance of working closely with communities. Leaders are committed to treating the public with fairness and respect.
Gwent Police has several different ways it engages with the public, like through social media, outreach work and attending community events.
The workforce understands the importance of treating people with fairness and respect. However, frontline officers and staff varied in their knowledge of unconscious bias.
The workforce understands how and when to use force and the powers of stop and search. But Gwent Police needs to improve how it monitors use of these powers. More data and information would help. Good monitoring will help the force identify and understand trends and unfairness. Then it can reassure any community or group that they will get fair treatment.
The force has arrangements in place for external scrutiny of use of force and stop and search.
Areas for improvement
- The forcee should ensure that appropriate members of its workforce receive training in, and understand, unconscious bias.
- The force should ensure it monitors a comprehensive set of data on its use of force to enhance its understanding of fair and effective use of this power.
- The force should ensure it monitors a comprehensive set of data on its use of stop and search to enhance its understanding of fair and effective use of these powers.
How well does the force ensure that its workforce behaves ethically and lawfully?
Gwent Police requires improvement in behaving ethically and lawfully.
Gwent Police is good at maintaining an ethical culture. But it needs to do more to ensure that all members of its workforce are appropriately vetted for the posts they hold. It also needs to do more to monitor applicants to see if they belong to certain protected minority groups.
Gwent Police needs to improve how it spots and manages corruption risk. The force is not able to monitor its mobile devices. Doing so will help the force make sure that the workforce is using them appropriately.
The force needs to make sure that it has enough people and resources to assess any corruption risks from monitoring mobile devices and support people who are most at risk of falling into corrupt practices.
The workforce understands the need to declare gifts and hospitality.
Areas for improvement
- The force should ensure all staff have received at least the lowest level of vetting clearance for their roles, including those in designated posts, ensuring it is fully compliant with the national vetting guidelines.
- The force should monitor vetting decisions to identify disparities and disproportionality (e.g. BAME groups), and to reduce them where appropriate.
- The force should ensure its anti-corruption strategic threat assessment and control strategy are regularly refreshed using local and national data, and are subject to effective governance arrangements.
- The force should ensure that its counter-corruption unit:
- has sufficient capability and capacity to gather, assess and develop information about corruption risks effectively; and
- has full information technology monitoring to effectively protect information in its systems.
To what extent does the force treat its workforce with fairness and respect?
This question was not subject to detailed inspection in 2018/19, and our judgment from the 2017 legitimacy inspection has been carried over.
However, Gwent Police had three areas for improvement in the 2017 legitimacy inspection. These were:
- The force should review how high potential members of the workforce are selected for leadership development.
This has been met. - The force should take steps to ensure selection and promotion processes are transparent to improve the perception of fairness of officers and staff.
This is being progressed. - The force should continue to develop an effective system for managing individual performance to improve the perception of its value by officers and staff.
This is being progressed.