Police's unsolved crime figures worst in England and Wales (From Surrey Comet)

Surrey Police's unsolved crime figures worst in England and Wales

2:03pm Friday 23rd September 2011 in Epsom By Louise Robertson

Police's unsolved crime figures worst in England and Wales

Police reform is needed to solve the Surrey’s rate of fact that unsolved crime in Surrey is now the joint highest in England and Wales.

That is the message from Dominic Raab, MP for Esher and Walton.

Unsolved crime has increased every year for the past five years, according to crime statistics from the Home Office.

Surrey’s sanctioned detection rates, which show the percentage of reported crimes that result in someone being charged, cautioned, fined or brought before the courts, lies at just 20 per cent.

That makes it the lowest in the south-east, and the joint lowest of all 43 police forces in England and Wales, along with West Midlands Police.

Dominic Raab, MP for Esher and Walton, said: “Surrey Police suffered a 40 per cent real-term cut in funding under the last Government and as a result detection rates have slumped since 2007 to the lowest in the country.

“The force has a credible plan for getting more officers on the street, by cutting bureaucracy and selling premises that have not been fully operational for many years.

“But, these figures also demonstrate the case for police reform, cutting red-tape, slashing centralised targets and making forces accountable to the community through locally elected police commissioners.

“The end product must be more visible, pro-active and robust law enforcement.”

A police spokesman said they predicted the sanction detection rate would be lower as of 2008, because that was when Surrey Public First was introduced.

The campaign involved police taking a commonsense approach to crime and focusing on what people want, rather than chasing targets.

Assistant Chief Constable Jerry Kirkby said: “It is the public’s view of our service that matters to us and they have warmly welcomed our initiatives to return to common-sense policing, to reduce the number of senior management posts and to invest in 200 more frontline police constables through co-locating in public buildings.

“Clearly, there are areas that need to be improved, and work to improve our burglary figures and detection rate continues.”

They said the figures needed to be looked at in context to commonsense policing, which includes informal resolutions for teenagers to stop them being criminalised for minor offences.