Question
At the Performance Committee meeting in January 2023, Officers made reference to an Audit of Hate Crime Report. Could the Chief Constable provide a timeframe for when this report can be shared with Committee members?
Answer
A copy of the report has been provided to the Board
Summary - As part of a national examination of Police response to Hate Crime, the police service volunteered to be audited by the national hate crime advisor and their Independent Advisory Group (IAG). This took place during August and September of 2022. The audit examined 112 reports to Police including 94 hate crimes and 18 non-crime hate incidents. Whilst the findings of this audit will be anonymised and form part of the national oversight report, a summary of the findings was provided to the PSNI which contained a number of recommendations.
The audit found that the standard of service offered by The Police Service of Northern Ireland was found to be generally of a high standard, with only 1% of Command and Control records and 6% of initial responses being assessed as poor. Professor John Grieves and Iqbal Bhana, members of the audit team and IAG stated, “We saw some of richest records I’ve seen, even those with deficiencies showed empathy to the victim. There were good examples of OIC’s thinking creatively” and “PSNI is one of best we’ve seen in terms of record management and we found few that had missed opportunities. PSNI staff appeared to have been open and honest during process.”
The findings highlighted the benefit of the strategic oversight the Police Service of Northern Ireland has for hate crime, through its Gold, Silver and Bronze structures, and also the robustness of the systems of scrutiny and supervision applied to incidents where they occur.
An area that was felt to be of significant benefit to victims of hate was the fact that in the majority of cases it is the attending officer that sees the investigation through from beginning to end. It was noted that this, together with active first line supervision, in many cases contributed to providing a standard of response that was better than experienced in many other areas of the UK.
The audit team followed up the examination of Police records by contacting victims to establish their perception of the service they had received. Whilst the sample size was small, the report outlines that the responses far outperform the national average (from the Crime Survey of England and Wales) with 75% of the persons spoken to grading the service received as ‘excellent or good’. This is in comparison to the national average of 55%.
In terms of accurate crime recording, none of the non-crime hate incidents examined were judged that they should have been recorded as a crime rather than an incident. This was again highlighted as being better than seen in other audits conducted.
One area that was highlighted as requiring focus was the one hour attendance time for priority calls. The audit found that in 31% of the incidents examined, the response time was outside of this target. This is an area that will be examined more closely for priority calls as a whole as it is a concern that is wider affects call attendance for all priority calls.
RECOMMENDATIONS
A number of recommendations have been made to Police Service of Northern Ireland. These are yet to be examined in detail and formally agreed
Recommendation One
This series of audits responded to CPS data that England and Wales was indicating a drop in referrals for charge decisions, but this data does not include files to the PPS It is recommended that force hate crime leads discuss this report with PPS, hate crime leads and ascertain if comparable data is available from police or PPS systems to establish whether a similar trend is prevalent in Northern Ireland.
Recommendation Two
If action is taken at Recommendation One, to seek to identify whether victims declining to support prosecutions is a persistent factor, as it is in England and Wales, where up to 31% of overall victims are not willing to support action.
Recommendation Three
That Police Service of Northern Ireland considers revisiting this audit periodically using a similar methodology, to assess progress against strategic goals and service standards.
Recommendation Four
That PSNI reviews the one hour attendance target for priority hate crimes (possibly comparing it to all crime reports) and either (a) amends the target, or (b) puts in place command and control targets to measure performance by, perhaps asking C&C supervisors to record an entry onto delayed deployments, showing that the delay is necessary.
Recommendation Five
Auditors noted that this type of audit is not the best method to assess the quality of victim support services offered after a victim reports a crime and during any criminal justice process. If not already done elsewhere, it is recommended that the Police Service of Northern Ireland consider, with The Department for Justice and other partners, whether available services meet the diverse needs of victims and how culturally sensitive and ‘enhanced’ victim services are offered (the national Hate Crime IAG have offered to assist in this process if undertaken).
Recommendation Six
It is recommended that the force hate crime lead satisfies themselves that the practice of offering to take and submit Victim Personal Statement follows policy targets and assesses compliance, if their use is expected in Northern Ireland.
Recommendation Seven
That managers take note of the excellent response of Constable (REDACTED) for his response to an anti-transgender non-crime hate incident on 11.4.22 and that they are thanked for the response, which reflects well on the service.
Peter Osborne