Strategic Panel meeting

We had time in today's agenda to delve into the statistics behind (a) the recording of serious sexual offences and (b) reports of missing people.

Yet again, the detail we were able to drill into exposes the misleading nature of simple statistics in the world of policing.

Boldly, the Police Authority has stated a desire to see increased numbers of sexual crimes reported.  This is because it is widely known that this is an area where crimes are often not reported at all for obvious reasons - by their nature, these are very personal matters and not everyone wants to involve the police and criminal justice system in this aspect of their life, especially if they don't believe that they will be taken seriously or the perpetrator caught.

We seem to be having some success now with increased numbers of "old" cases being brought to the police (some are even decades old) which suggests that victims' confidence is increasing.

With respect to reports of missing people, 7,000 such reports are received each year by West Mercia  Police.  Not surprisingly, many relate to children and most of those reports are related to children in care.  By focussing on the care homes and the children most likely to run away, numbers are down 10% this year which can only be good news all round.