Minister pledges to publish more crime details on policing website

The public should be given detailed information on what happens to offenders following specific crimes on their streets, the Policing and Criminal Justice Minister has said.

Nick Herbert said developments on the crime-mapping website police.uk, which show how many criminals have been jailed following offences, were just the first step to greater transparency.

But the public will want to know more and they are entitled to be given the details, he said.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Technical issues and concerns over privacy, human rights issues, the identification of victims, and the scope of information provided will all have to be addressed as the website, which has had 47 million visits in almost 18 months, develops, added the Conservative MP for Arundel and South Downs.

His comments came as figures showed only one in six crimes recorded by police on the site resulted in court action.

Some 84 per cent were dealt with by police, either through a caution or some form of restorative justice, the data showed.

Mr Herbert said: “The public demand will be, ‘We want to know more specifically what happened, not just that there was a prison sentence, but what’. Or that they may wish to know who the offender was. We will have to address each of those and say firstly, what is technically possible, and secondly, what is the right amount of information to provide. There should be transparency, there should be open justice, unless there are compelling reasons not to.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

He added: “People don’t just want to know that crimes have been committed in their street. They also want to know what happened. I think people are entitled to this information.”

The latest developments on the website come after Prime Minister David Cameron wrote to Cabinet Ministers last July, telling them that from this month it would “provide the public with information on what happens next for crime occurring on their streets”.

Mr Herbert said the move was a “huge step forward in the Government’s agenda for transparency”.

It gives the public “the information that enables them to hold the criminal justice system to account, information which is or ought to be publicly available but being delivered in a far more accessible way for the first time”.