The Home Office has unveiled plans that will enable police forces to combine data from different sources and use technology to fight crime.
As part of plans outlined in the Modern Crime Prevention Strategy report, published this week, police will place more importance on data and analytics in investigations. There would also be a National Law Enforcement Data Programme that would pull in data from the Police National Database, the Police National Computer and automatic number plate recognition systems. It would put all three systems onto a single platform.
The combined technology is intended to help police officers combine all supporting data together to spot links to other crimes in a more efficient manner.
The strategy document said the Home Office would also develop a data analytics capability which brings together data on immigration and asylum, visa applications and organised crime. It said the focus of this work to date has been on generating operational intelligence to tackle immigration crime and protect UK borders.
Next year, the Home Office said it would use criminality data to map criminal networks, and identify trends, patterns and relationships for further investigation.
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The document said that the Home Office would work with the National Police Chiefs’ Council to ensure that new capabilities which law enforcement needs to prevent crime and protect the public, and which depend critically on data and technology, are delivered on a regional or national basis.
This will include giving technology suppliers a single point of contact in these areas, ensuring the police can make the most of their expertise.
In a speech given by Baroness Shields, she said the Home Office would be undertaking “assessments of emerging technology and convene manufacturers and other experts to consider how to design out and eliminate more crime risks.”
Shields added that the government would be introducing a cross-government IP Reputation Service, “which will warn government websites when they try to do business with known bad addresses”.
The government is also putting in place a range of actions to allow it to respond to an attack, including offensive cyber capability through the National Offensive Cyber Programme.
“As part of this police forces across the world need to work together to ensure that less and less of the world is a hiding place for cyber criminals,” said Shields.
