Serious organised crime performance framework

One of Staffordshire police force’s key areas of focus is understanding its SOC performance. The force decided that performance against SOC needed to be more visible so it could be reviewed in more detail. The key to tackling SOC is understanding the threat posed, utilising intelligence and analysis to enhance knowledge and enable evidenced based interventions.

The overall aim of the SOC Performance Framework is to have a ‘one stop shop’, developed as a dashboard. This includes SOC performance across all of the themes to provide a holistic SOC overview for gaps to be identified. Whilst various SOC elements are reported upon regarding performance over time, utilising quantitative data and effective assessment across themes provides a clearer picture of threat and risk across the SOC areas:

• highlighting changes to better enable decision making
• tasking direction

Taking a holistic approach means that a defined understanding of what SOC is known to be impacting the force is recorded. The impact of policing activity is able to be evidenced and evaluated, and changes in threat over time are more readily identified.

There was previously no central dashboard of performance against SOC, so the framework has been used to provide governance, knowledge, and direct tactical decision making. The SOC performance framework provides information and touchpoints for discussion across force wide and partner meetings and ensures one reference reporting with consistent context and comparison.

The outcomes of the SOC performance framework were expected to improve performance measurements for SOC including:

• criminal justice (CJ) outcomes
• number of organised crime groups (OCGs) disrupted
• number of National Referral Mechanism’s (NRMs) flagged
• increase in drug policing activity
• maximise the use of Regional Organised Crime Units (ROCU) assets
• and lower the threat posed by SOC

There are expected improvements from being able to monitor SOC performance holistically. It is important to measure the safeguarding approach taken while monitoring SOC performance. The target outcome is keeping people safe by lowering the threat level of harm posed by SOC. By better understanding the threat, it is easier to know what areas need to be targeted. 

The SOC performance framework was developed by the head of analysis and head of service delivery to inform an overarching performance framework.

The framework is formatted against SOC themes/criminality, it uses baseline performance measures against crime types/offence groups. This enables standard measures for annual, quarterly, and monthly comparison to understand change over time.

The SOC framework uses data reported within Agency and Partner Management of Information System (APMIS) to detail numbers of OCG’s, county lines, priority nominals and SOC investigations. It refers to Measurement of Risk in Law Enforcement (MoRiLE) and disruption activity to provide context around threat posed and impact of policing activity and understand trends and emerging issues.

SOC is present in various forms and within many crimes, it is important to understand the wider picture as well as homing in on particular crime types, such as vehicle crime in serious organised acquisitive crime (SOAC), or drug possession offences.

The framework includes themes such as:

• Firearms intelligence and criminality to understand how they may affect or influence SOC activity and therefore the threat and risk posed, referencing, and using National Ballistics Intelligence Service (NBIS) and National Crime Agency (NCA) reporting where available.
• Modern slavery human trafficking (MSHT) and organised immigration crime (OIC), data and information are extracted from local team tracking and analytical scanning to report upon cases and safeguarding/referrals.
• Economic crime including money laundering, fraud and cyber-crime, investigation levels and disruptions from APMIS are used, alongside data referenced from the National Fraud and Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) Fraud and cyber crime dashboard.
• ROCU activity in the force area is presented, with comparison across the region to help understand any regional changes/trends? or influences and the His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) PEEL digital analysis pack is also referenced.
• SOAC, if available and relevant the National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service (NaVCIS) and OPAL (the National Intel Unit for SOAC) may be referenced regarding highlighted issues that are either impacting the force or have the potential to.

Where relevant, key findings and/or data from analytical products are included to provide additional detail and context. The data is also portrayed by geography where appropriate, to enable more detailed understanding.

A template was created to collate data from all of the above data sources alongside the available automated data collection elements, this was to ensure consistent reporting and a standardised approach. Automated data collection elements are used to report around:

• MoRiLE and OCGs: utilising APMIS for initial data collection and reporting around disruptions
• drugs and acquisitive crime: utilising scheduled performance reporting through business objects
• economic crime: Investigations and disruptions utilising APMIS, National Fraud and Intelligence Bureau’s (NFIB) fraud and cyber crime dashboard, with additional action fraud data from the internal force wide dashboard

Due to the current nature of data being sourced from different origins, it is currently displayed via a PowerPoint presentation. The intention is to automate this in its entirety and present on a PowerBI dashboard. 

This PowerPoint presentation was produced as a quarterly product informing SOC Governance, SOC working group, organised crime group mapping (OCGM) and tasking and performance meetings. It is a consistent agenda item and is presented within meetings as a slide inclusion in the meeting documentation pack, or as a verbal update. This is currently produced and presented bi-annually. 

An evaluation led by Staffordshire Police by taking feedback from business areas and meeting participants has been completed.

The evaluation looked at:

• how the intervention is implemented
• how and why it might work or not work
• for who it might work or not work

The results were reported at the strategic SOC meeting chaired by the assistant chief constable (ACC). The results showed that there are advantages of the product such as better informed leaders and practitioners, and it ensures appropriate scrutiny and accountability in order to improve the outcomes from SOC policing activity.

The current format is predominantly manually built and therefore time and resource intensive. Manual assembly does however allow for changes to reporting depending upon what information is available and variances in reporting periods. These are disadvantages. 

The initiative has provided available SOC performance data to key decision makers, thus enabling focus, comparison and evidenced decision making, prioritisation and tactical tasking. It has provided a means to track changes over time and understanding of trends and patterns as well as an overarching assessment of SOC threat and risk as is known and identified.

This product is now used force wide and provides standard reporting in key SOC meetings, removing the necessity for different business areas to separately compile and report on performance. As a result, SOC is now more widely discussed across different elements and crime types.

The initiative has set out what it aimed to achieve by taking a more holistic approach and encompassing knowledge of SOC performance force wide, knowledge of trends, patterns, and impact of activity. It has led to more focus on SOC activity out of specialist business areas and assisted in APMIS roll-out for recording activity.

It was sometimes difficult to identify the most suitable data sources for the relevant themes when creating this product. Work is ongoing to define additional performance parameters that best represent SOC criminality, activity, and impact. If forces have access to the data they collate, manipulate, analyse, and provide an assessment and relevancy/context. Without some form of automation, this process takes time.

Difficulties include the manual aspect of the project, resourcing it and in some areas identification of consistent reporting to enable long-term collation and analysis. It wasn’t difficult to gain support from an end-user viewpoint, or from business areas if they were able to provide access to the data rather than be involved in the collation of it. The majority of data reported on is what is directly available from already existing work/sources.

The ability to automate the design is limited due to the unstructured nature of the data in some cases or lack of consistent reporting. The multiple locations that data is held because of what it relates to complicates the ability to automate.

It is a large piece of work that does benefit the force and the thematic leaders from ACC to superintendent level. Although the force is aiming to automate as much of the platform as possible. It is unlikely to be able to automate much more than approximately 50% of its content.