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Independent Scrutiny Panel Meeting Notes 26/01/16
Welcome and Introductions
Supt Wratten welcomed all and introductions of Panel members were made
Notes and Actions from previous Panel
The Panel werein agreement with the notes and conclusions circulated from the previous meeting held on 22/09/15.
Supt Wratten updated the panel members with the BTP activities that had occurred since, and as a result of the previous Scrutiny Panels. He stated that there had been a 60% reduction in offences relating to outraging public decency and sexual offences since the panel had started reviewing such cases and the revised procedures, in relation to these offences, had been published.
He reported that as a result of the previous panel’s suggestions,in relation to section 4(A) racially aggravated public order offences and section 5 public order offences, some educational material had been sent to our Learning Exploitation Team who is responsible for the promotion of best practice in the force; this material had been disseminated to front line officers.
He then gave updates relating to two cases that had been reviewed at the last panel meeting. The first, where a caution that had been administered had, subsequently, been expunged; this related to a sexual offence where one of the offenders had denied the offence and the other had admitted the offence, and had received a caution as a result. The second which related to a criminal damage case, involving spitting, where a further review of the evidence concerned had resulted in the original disposal decision being upheld.
Turning his attention to the current panel, Supt Wratten outlined a suggestion regarding a change to the panel voting mechanism. Previously, an overall decision had been recorded on the conclusion template, but it was felt that a show of hands for/against might provide a more balanced picture of the decision reached and would allow those who, for whatever reason, disagreed with the majority decision, to have their opinion noted.
He concluded by saying that he was looking into ways of introducing new themes to the panel and also at ways of introducing charity representatives to future meetings.
Legal Updates and Justice Project Updates
There were no legal matters requiring update.
Nicola Vallins gave an update on the Community Resolution project, stating that some 90% of BTP officers had now been trained in CR and that CR was now part of business as usual activities in the force. She stated that new CR guidance had now been received from MoJ and that this would be published in due course.
A question arose regarding how aware the industry was with the CR disposal. Nicalo stated that they had been consulted at the inception of this project and that they had ‘bought into’ the CR process as a result of this. She added that they do not feel that dealing with cases, using the CR approach, is in any way regarded as a lesser disposal to more established methods.
She added that a CR pilot was currently ongoing whereby the number of out of court outcomes had been reduced to two only; she would feed back the results of this pilot to the panel when they were known.
She finished by stating that the MoJ had recently been carrying out a review of how scrutiny panels were being run across all forces and that BTP had been informed that its approach was satisfactory.
A general discussion took place in relation to the recent knife crime statistics which had been produced for the panel to view. There was concern among the group about the number of foreign nationals who were arrested for possession of offensive weapons when they arrive, for example, on the Euro Star from Paris. Supt Wratten stated that he was satisfied that BTPs disposals of such cases were always appropriate.
Insp Granville Sellers who was attending the panel as an observer, as he had been tasked with setting up a similar panel to review hate crime cases and all reported incidents and crimes, gave a brief overview of progress in relation to his projects. He stated that he had found the meeting very informative and that Nicola had given him a lot of the documentation that she had produced for this panel, things such as terms of reference etc. The next stage of his project would be to put an options paper together for Ch Insp Mann with a view to commencing in April/May 2016.
Case File Reviews
Conclusions templates were completed for all cases, including a summary of the surrounding discussion and additional actions and feedback where appropriate. The templates have been included within the minute circulation.
Feedback
There was nothing to report.
AOB / Next Meeting
The next meeting was provisionally agreed for ?
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