A police force has been downgrading crimes involving children, some as serious as domestic abuse, in order to ease demand on response teams, according to a watchdog report.
Cases at Northamptonshire police highlighted in the report included one in which officers visited the home of a woman five days after she had called to report being assaulted by her partner in front of her two-year-old daughter. The investigation was subsequently closed because of the lack of evidence to support a prosecution.
Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services also said the force’s management of registered sex offenders was particularly troubling. It said a specialist team was significantly under-resourced and overworked when it was inspected in March, with officers expected to manage caseloads well above nationally approved guidelines.
Inspectors found evidence of some good work by individual officers but the watchdog said poor management of registered sex offenders and inaccurate risk assessments were putting vulnerable children at risk.
A spokeswoman for the inspectorate said: “We were disappointed to find that call handlers often downgraded crimes involving children, some as serious as domestic abuse, to ease demand on their response teams.”
In a section dealing with initial contacts between the public and the police, the report found that calls initially graded by handlers as requiring a prompt response were sometimes not attended to within the target of an hour.
It gave the example of a woman who contacted police to report she had been assaulted by her partner while their two-year-old daughter was present. Staff in the control room made what the report described as a timely assessment of the risk and a decision was made to call for a prompt response, but officers failed to attend within the required timeframe. The call was subsequently downgraded to a scheduled appointment.
Because it took five days for police to visit, this limited opportunities to provide early reassurance and engage with the victim, make an assessment of the child and gather evidence such as CCTV footage and witness statements.
The force’s chief constable, Simon Edens, welcomed the report and said he was pleased that inspectors had recognised what he described as the force’s commitment to improving services for the protection of children.
“Overall the report praises our ‘unquestionable commitment to the protection
of children’ while outlining a number of areas where significant improvements
are required,” he said. “We fully accept these findings, many of which the force had already identified. Work is well under way to address each of the report’s recommendations.”
The county’s police and crime commissioner complained earlier in July that the force continued to receive an unfair amount of funding from government in comparison with other forces.
Stephen Mold, who was elected to the role as a Conservative candidate two years ago, said in his annual report for 2017-18 that the situation had “placed real pressures on the delivery of frontline policing in our county”.
A spotlight also fell on the public funding crisis in Northamptonshire this year after the Conservative-run county council signalled it was close to effective bankruptcy after admitting that “severe financial challenges” meant it was unable to meet its financial obligations in the current year.
