Why are so many crimes getting reported to Action Fraud – the official police reporting service – and so few of them coming to any ‘outcome’? Between April and September 2013 (the period of study), 115,991 crimes were reported to Action Fraud; the proportion of cases reported to Action Fraud that achieved an outcome … around 2pc.
Hence a Home Office research study and report, ‘The scale and drivers of attrition in reported fraud and cyber crime’.
The researchers found reasons from start to finish. First, the public, and some Action Fraud and police call handlers, found it hard to complete the Action Fraud crime reporting form. Next (despite that winnowing out), the report admits that ‘ it is not feasible for NFIB [National Fraud Intelligence Bureau] staff to look at every crime report’, as there’s so many. The less detail (such as suspect’s bank account details, telephone number, or vehicle registration) that the victim can provide, the less chance anything will come of the report. Besides, the researchers found that ‘ Crime Reviewers are spending considerable amounts of time working on crimes that will not actually be sent out to a police force for further investigation’.
That’s not all. If a case does get sent from Action Fraud case to local police forces, and others such as Trading Standards, for investigation and enforcement, police might be confused about who’s investigating what (as frauds especially online cases can happen in one force area or even country and originate or have links in others); and again, there are ‘so many crimes they are unmanageable for forces’. Again linked with the sheer volume of such crimes, older crimes are perceived as ‘being more difficult to investigate’.
In case that’s not enough, the research found that where cases were sent to other agencies, such as Trading Standards, ‘there is no protocol by which any successful outcomes can be returned to NFIB, so those successes cannot be reflected in outcome rates’.
The research found what it called ‘a common theme’ that no-one knew what they were doing, or to put it in the more diplomatic words of the report, ‘a lack of understanding by police and Action Fraud staff of their role in the wider process, through to staff in police forces understanding their responsibility to return outcome information to NFIB’. For example, With the roll-out of Action Fraud, despite guidance, some forces took the impression ‘that they were no longer responsible for investigating fraud’.
The researchers found ‘problems with information being accurately recorded in a timely manner’.
