A collection of news articles, reports, and publications available in the public domain, which are relevant to UK policing.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd is set to announce £9m to boost the fight against paedophiles, drugs and arms dealers operating in clandestine corners of the internet.
According to the Home Office, only 30 per cent of local police forces currently have a cyber capability that reaches the minimum standard.
Source: Independent
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has released it’s latest issue of Learning the Lessons.
This issue focuses on Protecting Vulnerable People (PVP) and discusses processes in relation to Call Handling, Custody, and Public Protection.
Source: IOPC
The number of homeless people recorded dying on the streets or temporary accommodation has increased year on year since 2013, from 31 to 70 in 2017. It is likely however, that the number is higher, as there are no national homeless death statistics.
Rough sleepers are also 17 times more likely to be a victim of violence.
The investigation from the Guardian has prompted leading homeless charities to extend the review system used by local government and emergency services to investigate the deaths of vulnerable adults. Currently, homeless deaths are only investigated if there is concern that state agencies could have done more to prevent a death.
Source: Guardian
Gender pay gap reports are a new legal requirement this year, which are now publicly available on a government database. Public sector organisations submitted their reports by 31 March, with private organisations reporting on 4 April.
For police forces, the average gap was median gender pay gap is 17.2%, with a mean gender pay gap of 12.2%. For City of London police, their numbers only account for officers, as staff are employed separately.
However, the pay gap within forces is dependent on the mix of officers to staff, and the proportion of females (and their distribution in the pay scale) in each. Not all forces provided their gender pay gap report broken down into officers and staff, but for those which did, the average median pay gap for staff is 5.9%, and for officers only 0.7%.
These lower figures, and the differences between them, demonstrate a more complex picture of equality in police workforces, and more analysis is needed to fully understand the reasons behind the gap.
Police Professional have published their weekly newsletter.
This issue contains:
A ticket to riches
Tools that were once only available to nation states are appearing on the web and enabling an explosion of cybercrime. Police Professional looks at why law enforcement needs to get better at targeting the dealers.
Westlaw Criminal Law Week
Round-up of new developments regarding offences, police powers and the rules of procedure and evidence, with commentary from Westlaw Criminal Law Week.
Scaling up Servator
Four forces have joined together to harness residents and businesses to prevent terrorism at more than 1,000 locations in London.
Growing a culture
Steve White urges forces to re-think what they want to achieve and not rely on just changing rules, structures and laws to be successful in the future
Selecting the Maigrets
With forces rushing to recruit and train detectives, Police Professional looks at research that is attempting to identify those with the best reasoning skills.
Identification thresholds
Testing criminals for drug use could be simplified after researchers found that setting a minimum level of traces within fingerprints eliminated errors.
Reflecting on transition
As new legislation and governance arrangements for safeguarding children come into effect, Police Professional looks at the challenges for those investigating some of the most horrific of crimes.
Police Oracle has published it’s weekly newsletter. This is a special edition on Custody. Contents includes:
Force gets flak for sorting offenders using ‘crude’ stereotypes
Feeding ‘offensive’ profiles through artificial intelligence to make decisions on freedom and justice is ‘truly dystopian’, says privacy group
The false accusation was damning: Acquitted ex-officer speaks out
There are renewed calls for a public inquiry into the treatment of a former sergeant prosecuted over an alleged incident in custody 28 years after it supposedly happened.
Thousands of violent crime suspects released following ‘disastrous’ bail reforms
Shocking figures have confirmed our worst fears, staff association says.
Vulnerable adults let down by Government’s ‘unacceptable’ custody laws
PCC: ‘The Government cannot wash its hands of this situation any longer’.
Arrangements for storing millions of custody images may be unlawful, says MP
Hundreds of thousands of innocent people’s photographs remain on police database.
Source: Police Oracle (signup required)
The Serious Fraud Office has announced a significant upgrade to its document analysis capability as artificial intelligence is made available to all of its new casework from this month.
By automating document analysis, AI technology allows the SFO to investigate more quickly, reduce costs and achieve a lower error rate than through the work of human lawyers, alone.
Able to process more than half a million documents a day, a pilot “robot” was recently used to scan for legal professional privilege content in the SFO’s Rolls-Royce case at speeds 2,000 times faster than a human lawyer. Building on this success, ‘Axcelerate’ a new AI powered document review system from OpenText, is now being rolled out alongside the robot, and will enable SFO case teams to better target their work and time in other aspects of investigative and prosecutorial work.
Previously, only independent barristers were used to comb through thousands of complex documents to identify evidence that could or couldn’t be seen by SFO investigators prior to them even beginning to sift through the documents themselves.
Not only will the new AI document review system be able to recognise patterns, group information by subject, organise timelines, and remove duplicates, it will eventually be able to sift for relevancy thereby removing documents unrelated to an investigation.
Source: Serious Fraud Office
The April / May issue of the Police Federation Magazine has been published.
Contents includes:
Source Police Federation
Opinion piece that examines the development of the law in relation to forced marriage and the protective remedies available for children and young people, focusing on the protective measures available by utilising the inherent jurisdiction of the court.
Source: Family Law Week
The Serious Violence Strategy sets out the government’s response to serious violence and recent increases in knife crime, gun crime and homicide.
Action in the strategy is centred on 4 main themes:
The strategy describes a range of initiatives including:
The strategy focuses on early intervention and prevention which can help catch young people before they go down the wrong path, encouraging them to make positive choices.
Source: Gov.uk
Police Horizon Scanning 