Information Sharing
Keynote address: the partnership approach and the way forward
The following is a report of the speech given by John Denham, Home Office Minister, at the inaugural Information Sharing Network Conference, 10 September 2001.
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Mr Denham spoke about the key issues surrounding the problems and opportunities in information sharing in the criminal justice system, and set the subject in a wider perspective.
When the Labour Government came to power in 1997, the Prime Minister made it clear that he demanded a joined up approach to the most intractable problems faced by the country such as child poverty, health inequalities and crime. Reducing crime had always been, and would remain, the primary task of the police, but over the last few years there had been a growing recognition that if the police were left on their own to deal with society’s crime problems then they could not succeed. The multi-agency approach was not invented in 1997, but since then the idea had been mainstreamed and made absolutely fundamental to the approach to crime reduction.
The Crime & Disorder Act 1998 was a milestone. It created the framework for a radical approach to tackle crime by empowering local partnerships. The prevention of crime and disorder in the community was now at the heart of the everyday working of every local authority in partnership with the police, and involved the probation service, health authorities, voluntary and private sectors, and the local community. There might be places that needed improvement over the next few years.
That same approach was also evident in the work of drug action teams, bringing together information from the police, the health sector and schools. Those teams that had been able to harness information most successfully had been able to identify more clearly the nature of their local drugs problem and had better targeted resources and substance misuse programmes.
Communities could not be made safer without finding out more about the problems in each area and looking for effective new solutions. Accepted opinions were often misleading, for example in one exercise conducted across a community safety partnership, partner agencies were asked to identify where they believed the hotspots of robbery, residential burglary and vehicle crime were. The results were compared with the actual hotspots in the run up to the exercise. Only 7% of those areas identified by the interviewees as being robbery hotspots were within actual hotspot areas. No areas were successfully identified by an individual partner as being within the actual residential burglary hotspots and only 6% of areas perceived as vehicle crime hotspots were in the actual vehicle crime hotspot areas. Getting information right was important.
Focusing on areas of high crime had been successful in identifying areas for priority action. Only when high quality information was available could best use be made of resources to target crime. Gathering and analysing data were the basic components of a problem solving approach. Local communities could actively contribute to the decision making process in the challenge to reduce crime. The police, in partnership with local groups, had achieved particular success in reducing domestic burglary, down 30% since March 1997 and at it lowest level since the late 1980s.
There had been some major successes in using the partnership approach to tackle youth crime, for example Blackburn with Darwen, where crime analysis had been followed with the targeting of three specific areas in the borough over the last year. As a result there had been a real impact on the reduction of youth crime and juvenile nuisances.
The rising concern about youth crime had led to a readiness on the part of agencies to share information about individuals earlier. This helped to bring about earlier identification of those who were involved, and those most likely to become involved, in serious offending, and it enabled practitioners to make informed decisions on the interventions that were most likely to prove successful.
He had no doubt that effective information sharing would be critical to the success of a new and more focused approach that was being developed to tackle the growing problem of youth street crime in London. The origins lay in some innovative work undertaken by agencies in one or two London boroughs to develop a better understanding of the true nature of youth crime and victimisation. All the agencies in these boroughs worked well together, but it became clear to them that they had to do better in sharing what they knew about young people at risk of crime and victimisation if they were to tackle the problem in an effective way. Once the agencies - the police, social services, education, youth offending teams and others – began to pool information in a way that they had not done before, they were able to see, for the first time, the true nature of the problem. All the agencies had sight of different parts of the picture, but no single agency had the whole view.
The benefits of this experience needed to be felt right across London, and the lessons learned would be transferred to other parts of the country. The very early lesson learned, or the lesson that the agencies on the ground had learned for themselves, was that more effective information sharing was critical to make a real and sustainable difference in tackling the problem. This included sharing information to help identify those young people who were already involved in serious offending, so that they could be successfully targeted by the police and criminal justice agencies. It also involved sharing information more readily across agency boundaries, about those who were just beginning to become involved in crime or who were at risk of this, whose behaviour, misbehaviour or other circumstances were just beginning to suggest, even at an early age, that they might be vulnerable to early involvement in crime and disorder when they got a little older. It was right at this critical time that those programmes or interventions were put in place – whether in school, at home, or in the wider community, or probably all of these at the same time and consistently to prevent these young people going on to a criminal and anti-social way of life later on. It was necessary to improve information sharing about the victims of crime, so that the true nature and scale of the crime could be better understood; this had to be the key first step in ensuring that the strategies to respond were focused on the right targets.
One of the keys to success in crime reduction was the need to involve statutory authorities, voluntary and private sector organisations, and the community more widely. There was a statutory obligation on partnerships under the Crime & Disorder Act to conduct an audit of crime in their area and produce a local strategy in the light of wide consultation with stakeholders in the community. That consultation must include as many representative groups as possible in the community to ensure that these strategies reflected both locally identified needs and national priorities.
The Home Office Research Development and Statistics Directorate had conducted research to identify good practice in consultation by crime and disorder partnerships. The briefing note on this research 
PDF 20Kb would be useful in getting the best out of consultation exercises, and consequently strengthen strategies to combat crime and disorder.
But however high the quality of consultation, the resulting strategies would not be fully effective unless they were based on clear and comprehensive arrangements for the sharing and use of information. Partnerships needed to review how information was collected and analysed, how they could identify other useful sources of information, how they could engage the local community in their work, and how they could work out the solutions that would best deliver results. The production of a strategy was not a goal in itself; it was essential to focus on the delivery of safer and more secure communities.
Some of the problems experienced were technical – making sure that the systems were available to collect and analyse good quality data. There were also cultural problems where there was an unwillingness to share personal data. There were difficulties with reaching a common understanding of the legal issues behind data exchange, and organisations did not always agree on this.
Problems had been experienced in getting co-operation from other organisations, many of which did not have the computer systems to enable them to transfer data easily, or they were worried about the risks of passing information that was inaccurate, incomplete or out of date. Some organisations were not prepared to disclose information because of the uncertainty they felt about the combined effects of the Human Rights Act, the Data Protection Act and the common law of confidentiality.
Some agencies did not seem to be clear about the extent to which they could disclose information using the powers provided by Section 115 of the Crime & Disorder Act. Too often the response to all these difficulties could be that it was safer to do nothing, but that was not good enough. Partnerships had a duty to do all that they reasonably could to prevent crime and disorder in their areas. It was essential to work together to tackle the unnecessary barriers to information exchange. There was no doubt that crimes could have been prevented, and even that lives could have been saved, if information had been exchanged at an earlier stage, particularly in cases of domestic violence.
The problems of data sharing and the risks involved both in disclosing information or withholding it had to be addressed. The release of information should be encouraged where there was a real threat of a crime being committed or the perpetrator being stopped.
The process of deciding to share information could be a difficult one. Whilst higher levels of exchange needed to be achieved, at the same time it should be ensured that all necessary safeguards for the privacy and wellbeing of ordinary people were scrupulously observed.
The Data Protection Act 1998 and the Human Rights Act 1998 were extremely important pieces of legislation designed to protect the rights and freedoms of the public. Practitioners needed to follow good information handling procedures in order to enable them to comply with the legislation and strengthen public confidence in the activities of the various agencies that shared information. It was obviously vital for partnerships involving the local community to build public confidence in the integrity of their work. He hoped that the conference would help with practical advice on tackling the challenges of data sharing.
There was a need for further guidance for those working in crime reduction to help clarify how data sharing should be approached, and what was allowed. He was therefore very pleased to announce the launch of the Toolkit on Intelligence and Information Sharing. The Toolkits programme aimed to provide information of practical value to people working at the sharp end of crime reduction. They could be found on the Home Office’s Crime Reduction website: www.crimereduction.gov.uk, and they already covered such diverse subjects as crime hotspots, business and retail crime, audits, repeat victimisation, robbery, alcohol related crime, rural crime, vehicle crime, domestic burglary, anti-social behaviour, drugs, persistent young offenders and so on.
The Toolkits contained comprehensive guidance and information on areas of best practice. They included key facts, methods of assessing local situations, how to develop strategies and put plans into action, and information on resources and useful contacts.
The Intelligence and Information Sharing Toolkit which appeared on the website for the first time on 10 September:
provided a framework for taking forward data sharing activity;
outlined the duties placed on authorities;
looked at the means of gathering and analysing information; and
outlined how to go about setting up information sharing protocols.
The Toolkit should provide help on many of the issues raised; there was advice on the impact of legislation, sources of data, quality and consistency, data mapping and drafting protocols. Getting protocols right was a particular area where more help was needed. Whilst the Toolkit gave detailed advice on setting up protocols, a model protocol that could be adapted by partnerships to reduce the work that needed to be done was being considered. Feedback was welcomed on this idea, and he wanted to hear more about successes in building protocols that worked successfully. He hoped delegates would look at other Toolkits in the series with a constructively critical eye. The Toolkits were living guidance which relied on feedback and contribution to maintain their value.
The Toolkit was just one of a range of measures to support data sharing. There would shortly be supplementary guidance available on the Crime Reduction website, looking in detail at the implications of legislation for data sharing by crime reduction professionals.
The Crime Reduction College and the National Police Training College at Bramshill provided training modules on crime and disorder reduction that covered data exchange issues. The potential for further training was being explored and was one of the issues on which it was hoped to get good feedback from the conference.
Another project on which the help of everyone was needed was scoping the data exchange issues faced in the work to reduce crime. This would set the agenda for the further work which the Home Office needed to do to make the data sharing process less complex and more easily understood.
It was just as important that those who were committed to making partnerships work in practice, were able to use each other as a resource. That was where the idea of a data-sharing network originated, and the first steps towards setting it up had been taken. He was pleased to officially launch the Network at the conference.
He hoped that many would find the idea of benchmarking groups within particular areas of work on crime reduction a useful one. There had been calls from practitioners for more practical advice, including examples of good practice in specific areas, and information on how others had succeeded in getting all parties involved in the work of partnerships. It would be an excellent result if the Network led to more specialised guidance by practitioners for practitioners.
A great deal of action was in progress across the country to implement sound information strategies, but as yet most areas did not have the mechanisms in place for the widespread collection and analysis of data. An effective framework for information exchange and analysis in all the crime and disorder partnerships had to be established.
The development of a National Framework for information exchange and data analysis was being explored by the Home Office and in particular by the regional crime reduction directors. The Framework would look to establish minimum standards in terms of IT, analytical capability, training and equipment at partnership level. In developing these standards, the Framework would recognise the individual requirements of partnerships and not seek to impose a uniform requirement on the distinctive needs of the various types of partnership. It would build on the good practice already existing in the field, and help to reduce duplication of effort. It would not replace the need for high quality local strategies, but it was hoped that it would help in producing and implementing those strategies. This was a broad framework and it was crucial that local strategies continued to increase and improve.
Only together could society’s challenge be met and communities be built where people always felt safe on the streets and in their homes, and where a better quality of life could be looked forward to for all.
Questions for Mr Denham
The point was made about the need to draw up a code analogous to the codes provided for under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, to provide greater working certainty for practitioners and avoid legal challenges. Mr Denham replied that there was no commitment to produce anything comparable in relation to data protection issues. The message he gave to the delegates was that improvements could be made in data sharing within the existing legislative framework. The point of having toolkits and guidance was to help people be more confident on when they could and should share information or not. The Cabinet Office Performance and Innovation Unit was looking at data sharing issues. They identified concerns and the need for more to be done, but comment before the report was published would be premature.
The use of CCTV to enforce parking, and the use of bus lanes, was raised as an area of concern in terms of public confidence. Mr Denham recognised the importance of maintaining public confidence in crime reduction, the criminal justice system and public safety. The proposed roll out of speed cameras throughout the country required a change to procedures to ensure they were more visible. Although he recognised lives had been saved, the public needed to understand the way they were used. The same principle had to be used for CCTV. Experience indicated that CCTV used as a crime reduction measure was very popular with the public.
In the area of youth justice and youth offending teams, he empathised with the concerns raised. An understanding was needed at a local level on what information could be used and for what purpose. The development of protocols, particularly a model protocol, and practitioners working with others through networks, would help to provide this understanding.
The funding for crime and disorder partnerships was raised. Bidding was frustrating at local level, but Ministers were anxious that the entire process was structured and built on the experience of what worked and incorporated into mainstream investments in the future.
Tackling crime and the symptoms of crime should be done at the same time. There was no excuse for the violence and lawlessness that occurred in Bradford, but the circumstances that caused the disorder needed to be understood. Individuals could not be freed from their personal responsibility to behave reasonably and as law-abiding citizens while ways to resolve the underlying problems were considered. Mr Denham was convinced that tackling crime and crime reduction had to be handled effectively and at the same time. The Government would not allow an excuse culture to develop; bad behaviour would not be tolerated in any circumstances. The criminal justice system worked on that basis.
It was accepted that a lot of information was available within partnerships but it was not always provided, particularly health information. This aspect of data sharing raised sensitivity issues and delegates needed to identify what information was useful and necessary to crime reduction, and work together to gather and analyse that information effectively.
Last update: Thursday, November 23, 2006