A cutting-edge, technological approach, to managing VAWG/RASSO investigations
The stark reality
- A woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK.
- Domestic abuse makes up 18% of all recorded crime in England and Wales.
- In the year ending March 2022, there were 194,683 sexual offences, of which 70,330 were rape.
What’s more, more than 21% of women have experienced serious abuse and harassment at least once online in the UK. And with online crime now the most prevalent crime type, there is no sign of this rate decreasing.
What is Policing doing to manage VAWG/RASSO?
In 2021, HM Government, Ministry of Justice and the Home Office conducted a review into the Criminal Justice System. It found a lack of data sharing and collaboration amongst Law Enforcement as well as issues surrounding reduced resources and higher workloads, difficulties in finding evidence due to data overload and that much evidence is stored in disparate systems that do not communicate.
Advancements in technology exist which can help policing to overcome these challenges, yet many forces are still to adopt appropriate solutions that will support them in making a positive difference.
What technologies should Police Forces be adopting to combat VAWG/RASSO?
As outlined in the report, forces must make the best use of data and reflective practice to gain a better understanding of the offences. Data can be found in multiple sources and formats, so having a solution which can address the following is of the utmost importance:
- Automate the cleansing and analysis of communications and location data (eg call data records, handset downloads, ANPR etc) A recent report by HMICFRS found that forces have a backlog of 25,000 devices waiting to be examined. Automation is key and the best solutions in the industry are self-serve and intuitive, meaning multiple roles (not just analysts) can ingest and analyse data to get the answers they need.
- Streamline OSINT – With resources tight, workloads high, expertise at a premium and online offences rising, forces should adopt federated search and entity enrichment tools to expedite investigations. Solutions that can support VAWG/RASSO investigations are those that are able to bulk search across social media platforms, consented data, and internal files, and overlay that information in one interactive dashboard, for quick and easy analysis.
- Collaborate and share data – Many of the problems in the criminal justice system have been compounded by agencies working in silos and not communicating effectively. Any case management or digital investigation software must make case collaboration and data sharing, internally and externally, an automated and secure process.
- Obtain evidence-based answers, fast – The demand for material required during investigations has increased and victims suffer when agencies take too long to investigate a case. To improve efficiencies, forces should have the means to store investigative data in a central location and perform cross-case analysis on operational and historical files, plus any third-party databases (that the system can API into), to determine if an entity has appeared before. This will help to fast track the attribution process and open lines of enquiry.
Technology is key to combatting the challenges that law enforcement faces concerning VAWG/RASSO investigations. The days of using manual processes to interpret data, relying on multiple, clunky systems that do not communicate and working in silos, must end. Policing should keep pace with the speed at which data is growing and adopt software that can support them in staying one step ahead. This is especially important to counteract the lack of resources and dwindling expertise that has been reported. Only with technology can forces improve efficiencies. They can automate the data analysis process and empower multiple roles to share the workload of it through intuitive, self-serve tools. Only with technology can forces spearhead their OSINT and be confident that they have uncovered all necessary evidence to secure a conviction. And only with technology can forces find evidence-based answers, fast, by overlaying multiple data types in one dashboard, to spot immediate patterns.
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