Home Office progress report on action after the Bichard Inquiry due tomorrow
Just a reminder that the Home Office is due to report to Sir Michael Bichard tomorrow (.pdf), Wednesday 21st December 2004, about any progress that it has made in implementing the reccommendations of his report into Police intelligence and criminal records databases and practices, set up after the Soham murders.
Sir Michael Bichard's Inquiry is due to report on this matter in March 2005, so watch out for the leaks, spin and media briefings between now and then.
Just what is the status of the Police Local Exchange (PLX) and the national police Intelligence Management Prioritisation Analysis Co-ordination and Tasking (IMPACT) databases ? Are they now national and integrated or are they still piecemeal ? David Blunkett did make promises about these, but he did he press forward with them, given that he obviously had other personal matters on his mind during the last six months.
Has Sir Michael Bichard's call for Yet Another National Database of people working with vulnerable children or vulnerable adults been
dropped or not ?
Comments
Whatever is revealed in the Bichard Inquiry progress report, needs to be read alongside the critical Audit Commmission report on Crime Recording
http://www.audit-commission.gov.uk/reports/NATIONAL-REPORT.asp?CategoryID=&ProdID=B82E88A8-D192-4aaf-85E9-D2A3F864AF3E&fromREPORTSANDDATA=NATIONAL-REPORT
which shows that 60% of the UK's police forces still have not met the data quality standards set by the Home Office, and that some forces like the Metroplitan Police are actually getting worse than in previous years.
Cambridgeshire and Humberside, however, the focus of the Bichard Inquiry into the Soham murders, seem to have a "good" audit rating.
The more data recording errors there are, the more innocent people will get accused of being criminals, and the more criminals will not be identified when they should have been.
Posted by: wtwu | December 29, 2004 1:29 PM