Lincolnshire Police rated 'good' in crime data

The report also says the force is ‘outstanding’ in its demonstration of leadership and culture to meet the national standings for crime recording - and allocates it an overall 'good' rating..

Chief Constable Bill Skelly says he is extremely pleased with the progress made:. “It is particularly gratifying that we have achieved an ‘Outstanding’ grading for our culture of improvement to meet the national standards,” he said. “We have also been recognised as ‘Good’ in the category of being effective at recording reported crime, but we recognise that we still have work to do in improving our systems and processes to support accurate crime recording.

“These improvements can only benefit victims because better data quality means we make better decisions, therefore enabling us to deliver a better service to people in Lincolnshire. We remain committed to doing all that we can to make sure we focus our efforts on protecting victims and trying to prevent anyone from becoming a victim of crime.”

The last Crime Data Integrity Inspection which highlighted areas for improvement took place in 2018, with the re-inspection in November and December last year. It states that the force had: ‘significantly improved its crime recording arrangements’which included ‘developing a comprehensive crime recording and e-learning package and invested in additional resources to scrutinise and improve crime recording decision making and data quality’ .

Within the element of the ‘effectiveness of the force at recording reported crime’, the Inspectorate itemises a number of categories of crime including sexual offences, rape and other violent crime.

It judged the force as having high levels of compliance with the integrity of recording (90.3% of crimes reported were recorded), 87.3% of reported violent crimes were recorded, 98.6% of sexual offences (including rape) were accurately recorded, all of which led to the ‘Good’ grading in that category.

Mr Skelly said the force had noted the areas highlighted for improvement, such as crime reports held on other systems and the way Multi Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (MARAC) are conducted. “We have already taken steps to introduce new operating procedures to ensure our compliance meets the high standards of these inspections,” said Mr Skelly.