HMICFRS Inspection Reports
The PCC has a statutory duty to comment on reports published by His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Service (HMICFRS) about Sussex Police. To make these easily accessible and to keep the public fully informed about any responses the PCC has made to HMICFRS, a copy of the response will be published below, together with links to the relevant report.
This study was undertaken to help HMIC understand better the effect that digital technology is having on crime and policing, for the purpose of informing future HMIC inspections of police forces and law enforcement agencies. The report can be viewed here.
PCC's Response
The PCC's response can be viewed here.
The extent to which a police force is successful at identifying, protecting and supporting those who are vulnerable is a core indicator of its overall effectiveness. In recognition of this, as part of its annual PEEL effectiveness inspection programme, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) graded all 43 police forces in England and Wales on how effectively they protect vulnerable people from harm and support victims. The inspection included a focus on how they respond to domestic abuse victims and missing and absent children, and how prepared they are to tackle child sexual exploitation.
- the thematic report on the police response to domestic abuse, Increasingly everyone’s business, which is a follow-up report to our 2014 report, Everyone’s business;
- reports published as part of HMIC’s rolling child protection inspection programme;
- the overarching PEEL effectiveness thematic report, due for publication in February 2016; and
- a thematic report on police management of cases of missing and absent children, and of child sexual exploitation, due for publication in spring 2016.
Honour-based violence (HBV) is the term used to refer to a collection of practices used predominantly to control the behaviour of women and girls within families or other social groups in order to protect supposed cultural and religious beliefs, values and social norms in the name of ‘honour’. HBV incidents and crimes include specific types of offence, such as forced marriage and female genital mutilation, and acts which have long been criminalised, such as assault, rape and murder. Throughout this report, we use HBV to refer to the full range of incidents and crimes which perpetrators carry out under the guise of maintaining or protecting perceived ‘honour’.
PCC's Response
The PCC's response can be viewed here.
The HMIC report sets out the findings of a review of the quality of criminal case files. It examines how effective the police are in providing accurate information of the circumstances of the case, identifying the vulnerability of victims and witnesses, and assessing and managing risks so the needs of witnesses and victims are met. The national report can be viewed here. The Sussex report can be viewed here.
PCC's Response
The PCC's response can be viewed here.
On behalf of the national Rape Monitoring Group (RMG), HMIC has published 42 local area digests (for police-recorded data the Metropolitan Police Service and the City of London are combined to make up the London local area) to provide a data set to enable more thorough analysis of how rape is dealt with in a particular area of England and Wales. The RMG will regularly review these digests with a view to enhancing the quantity and quality of the information they contain, so that the right questions and interventions can be made in driving improvements in this important area of work. These local area digests pull together a range of Home Office, Office for National Statistics, Crown Prosecution Service and Ministry of Justice data on rape in one place, and include the following: Police-recorded data on rape, broken down by adult or child, comprising:
- the number of recorded rapes;
- how many rapes were initially recorded as such, but then declassified to no-crimes; and
- how many recorded rapes resulted in the suspect receiving a charge/summons.
Data from the Crown Prosecution Service, comprising:
- the number of cases, by suspect, referred to the Crown Prosecution Service by the force for a decision on whether or not to charge with rape, and the number of defendants charged with rape; and
- the number of prosecutions and the number of convictions, by defendant, and the reasons for other prosecution outcomes.
Data from the Ministry of Justice, comprising:
- the number of prosecutions and convictions;
- the time taken from charge to completion of proceedings; and
- the average custodial sentence lengths for convicted offenders.
The data from the different organisations are collected over different timescales, numbers refer to either number of offences or number of suspects/defendants, and the way rape cases are identified varies between data collections. These factors, together with the time lag between different stages in the criminal justice process, mean that every data set may not refer to the same cohort of cases, and they are not directly comparable. The digest for Sussex can be viewed here.
PCC's Response
The PCC's response can be viewed here.
This HMIC inspection looked at how well police forces understand the demand for their service and how well they match their resources to that demand and provides an assessment of their efficiency. The efficiency report will be followed by reports on effectiveness and legitimacy in early 2016, which together make up the three pillars of the annual PEEL assessment. The national report can be viewed here. The Sussex report can be viewed here.
PCC's Response
The PCC's response can be viewed here.
In March 2013, HMIC published “Mistakes were made” which was a review into allegations and intelligence material concerning Jimmy Savile between 1964 and 2012. The report concluded that mistakes had been made in the handling of information and allegations into sexual abuse, and committed to a further review of information management practices. In May 2014, HMIC conducted a further review of the business processes which police forces in England and Wales use to collect, record, process, evaluate and share information. The national report can be viewed here. The Sussex report can be viewed here.
PCC's Response
The PCC's response can be viewed here.
The HMIC report, "Stop and Search Powers 2", sets out the findings of an inspection into the progress made by police forces since HMIC’s 2013 report, "Stop and Search Powers: Are the police using them effectively and fairly?". It also addresses the Home Secretary’s new commission for HMIC to examine the way the police use powers to stop motor vehicles and strip search people. The national report can be viewed here.
PCC's Response
The PCC's response can be viewed here.
On behalf of the Rape Monitoring Group, HMIC has published 43 force reports showing police data on how many rapes were recorded by the police in each force, and the outcomes. For both adults and children, the force digests:
- show the number of recorded rapes per 100,000 people in the area;
- show forces’ sanction detection rates for rape;
- show the rate at which rape was classed as ‘no crime rate’ by the force;
- allow data from each police force to be seen alongside the data for other individual forces in England and Wales; and
- show trends in recorded rape over time.
The digest for Sussex can be viewed here.
PCC's Response
The PCC's response can be viewed here.
The HMIC report, "The Welfare of Vulnerable People in Police Custody", examines the welfare of vulnerable people in police custody “including, but not limited to, those with mental health problems, those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds and children”. In particular, the Home Secretary asked HMIC to consider groups for whom there has been “a pronounced concern” about their treatment in police custody. The national report can be viewed here.
PCC's Response
The PCC's response can be viewed here.