Correspondence

SOC local partnerships bulletin: April 2019 (accessible version)

Published 28 May 2019

April 2019 Issue 10

Working together to tackle serious and organised crime

Welcome

Welcome to the tenth edition of our Serious and Organised Crime (SOC) Partnerships Bulletin, developed to share good practice from across government, law enforcement and the public, private and voluntary sectors. We hope these articles will form the basis for practitioners and policymakers to interact and share information to help develop both local activity and national policy that will protect the public from SOC.

In the last edition we reported on the creation of the new Home Office Serious and Organised Crime group which has seen the joining together of a number of different policy areas under the command of a single SOC Director General. As such this bulletin will be widening its focus to reflect a range of cross-cutting themes such as safeguarding, vulnerability and data and identity.

In this edition we are pleased to introduce a new regular feature on Community Resilience, and report on a number of important initiatives that support a more effective, joined-up approach to managing the risks posed by SOC offenders in our section on Lifetime Offender Management.

The SOC Partnerships Bulletin is released on a quarterly basis by the Home Office’s SOC policy group. If you have an article which you would like to feature in a future edition, please email the team mailbox below. If you have any further feedback/suggestions or questions, please contact your usual SOC contact or the SOC Partnerships mailbox at: SCOC.localpartnerships@homeoffice.gov.uk

From the centre

SOC strategy: Multi-Agency workshops

The Home Office Serious and Organised Crime (SOC) Strategy and Partnerships team have been running day long multi-agency workshops on understanding and implementing the Government’s new 2018 SOC Strategy, at a regional and local level. These events are taking place in England and in Wales and will give participants the opportunity to ask questions about the strategy, discuss the threat of SOC in their region, hear and share local best practice and workshop how to implement the strategy to tackle SOC together.

The workshops are aimed at working level colleagues who are or will be involved in implementing the strategy across the system, including law enforcement, the public sector, the private sector and the charitable sector. The workshops will help to build on existing partnerships and create news ones, so that together we can work as a single response to tackle the threat of SOC.

So far events have taken place in Exeter and London. Speaking about the recent event in Exeter on 29th January, Devon and Cornwall Police’s Head of Crime, Chief Superintendent Steve Parker said:

The SOC Strategy workshop was a great opportunity to bring stakeholders together from across the partnership landscape. It gave us space to think of the wider impacts of SOC and hear about creative ways to reduce its impact on communities. The discussions about preventative interventions delivered by 3rd sector organisations were particularly useful and gave us real food for thought on our next steps in delivering the strategy.

Forthcoming events will take place in the Midlands, the North and Wales in the coming months.

For more information or to be invited to these, please contact: socstrategyteam@homeoffice.gov.uk

Request for data sharing best practice

Here in the Home Office we acknowledge that there are often barriers to timely and effective data sharing between partner organisations. These can be legal, technological and frequently cultural. We are committed to supporting local multi-agency partners to overcome these barriers where possible. As such, we would very much like to hear from our readership if they are aware of any platforms, protocols or procedures currently in place within their and/or their partner organisations that they feel constitutes good practice in information sharing, and could inform our understanding of ‘what works’.

Please send details in the first instance to SOC Partnerships Team inbox SCOC.localpartnerships@homeoffice.gov.uk and we would be happy to follow up with you for more information.

Meet the…

Joint Anti- Corruption Unit (JACU)

The Joint Anti-Corruption Unit (JACU) is a cross-Government unit currently sitting in the Home Office which drives and coordinates HMG’s response to corruption. It has three major functions:

1. to monitor implementation of the UK Anti-Corruption Strategy, ensure departments take action to ensure delivery is on track and to report annually on progress;

2. to support the Prime Minister’s Anti-Corruption Champion (currently John Penrose MP); and

3. to project the Government’s policies for improved action at the international level against corruption, by influencing global and regional opinion and policy-forming processes. This includes representing the UK in international bodies (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), G20, G7).

The Strategy recognises that tackling corruption reduces the threat to our national security, increases prosperity and enhances public confidence in our domestic and international institutions. Corruption cannot be tackled in isolation, and so JACU works with multiple stakeholders across national and local government, law enforcement, civil society, international and multilateral partners and the private sector. The unit’s work spans multiple sectors including Serious and Organised Crime (SOC), procurement, local government, business integrity, insider threat and sports.

This work also seeks to raise international standards and help create a level playing field for our businesses to operate in. Part of this work includes the Beneficial Ownership Transparency Campaign which was launched in 2018 by the Champion and seeks to create a global norm around publicly accessible registers of company beneficial ownership. The UK is working on such registers both domestically and in our Overseas Territories.

For more information please contact Andrew.Preston1@homeoffice.gov.uk

Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency

The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is a government agency with law enforcement powers whose mission is to enhance the health of the public through the effective regulation of medicines and medical devices.

Our achievements to date:

• 86 suspects have been arrested or interviewed under caution.
• 13 wholesale dealers’ licences have been terminated and 8 pharmacists suspended. These cases are with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and convictions are expected.
• In 2017 the MHRA went to industry and collected millions of lines of medicines sales data for the commonly abused medicines. Analysis revealed that bulk trading by wholesale dealers has dramatically reduced.
• Illegal websites selling the medicines have moved their operations abroad to unhelpful jurisdictions and are now mostly selling foreign brands rather than trusted UK stock.

In 2015 the MHRA became aware that large volumes of Prescription- Only Medicines were being diverted from the legal healthcare supply chain and sold on the criminal market. The MHRA subsequently instigated 32 investigations uncovering organised criminality collaborating with wholesale dealers and pharmacists which resulted in the diversion of up to 5.6 million packs of medicines valued at £200 million.

Intelligence continues to indicate drug dealers are increasingly selling commonly abused medicines alongside their class A and B. MHRA can be contacted through their intelligence cell on 0203 080 7275 or intelligence@mhra.gsi.gov.uk or casereferrals@mhra.gsi.gov.uk for advice regarding medicines found in the hands of criminals.

Lifetime Offender Management

NPCC lead for Lifetime Offender Management and Prison Intelligence

Deputy Chief Constable (DCC) Jason Hogg is the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for Lifetime Offender Management (LOM) and Prison Intelligence and offers his perspective on the importance of partnership working to deliver effective management of priority Serious and Organised Crime (SOC) offenders.

Whilst my day-job is as a chief officer in Thames Valley Police, I also hold the National Police Chiefs’ Council portfolio for LOM and for Prison intelligence. I find both parts of my portfolio genuinely fascinating and I’m lucky I get to work with and across a diverse range of partner agencies. I’m particularly proud of my work over the past year to strengthen those relationships.

LOM is a key commitment in the Government’s new SOC Strategy, and we are piloting a new, 12 month multi- agency operating model to deliver LOM within the South East region. It is early days, but the pilot is already proving successful, which is down to the commitment and engagement from all partner agencies. Whilst we are yet to formally evaluate the pilot’s successes, I have already seen the positive impact we can have as partners by tackling SOC together, and have been impressed with the ‘can-do’ attitude of those involved in the LOM work across the board.

There are lots of similarities in my prisons portfolio too, and the improvements we have made to the response to crime in prisons and strengthening the prison intelligence network would not have been possible were it not for the excellent relationships with key partners such as Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and the Home Office.

The SOC strategy sets out the need for a whole-system approach to tackling SOC and from my experience I think this is vital; to encourage all involved in the fight against SOC to seize opportunities to work with partners at all levels, and to deliver the best service we can for the public.     

Lifetime Offender Management Multi-Agency Pilot

Lifetime Offender Management (LOM) is a multi-agency approach to disrupt high-priority serious and organised criminals in our communities and prisons. LOM, which is a cornerstone of the Government’s new Serious and Organised Crime (SOC) Strategy, brings police, prisons and probation (and other partners) closer together; and uses all available tools, resources and capability in a targeted way to prevent and disrupt SOC.

On 23 January, the South East Regional Organised Crime Unit (SEROCU) started a 12 month pilot and evaluation of a regional LOM model. The National Crime Agency (NCA), National Prisons Intelligence Coordination Centre (NPICC), Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire, Thames Valley and Metropolitan police, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) are all taking part in this ground- breaking pilot.

Under the leadership of Deputy Chief Constable Jason Hogg, SEROCU led the design of the model which uses a LOM criteria to identify high-harm SOC offenders using multi-agency intelligence. Partners nominate offenders into a joint assessment, prioritisation and tasking meeting (JAPTM) which is co-chaired by SEROCU and HMPPS. The JAPTM discuss the nominations before agreeing a final cohort of offenders to be managed under the LOM process. Partners meet again to agree and deploy a range of tactical measures to prevent and disrupt the offender from continuing in SOC.

A/Supt Paul Southey, Head of SEROCU and co-chair of JAPTM, has welcomed the pilot as a significant step forward: ‘LOM brings a range of partnership powers, skills and capability to bear on the highest- harm SOC offenders. I am looking forward to strengthening working across partners to prevent and disrupt serious and organised crime offenders ’ Sarah Coccia,

Prison Group Director, HMPPS, and co-chair of JAPTM said

LOM is about partners confidently sharing information and intelligence, about joint prioritisation and about denying priority SOC offenders space to operate and harm our communities and prisons.

For more information please contact Michael.Hall@serocu.pnn.police.uk

Digital Categorisation Service

Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) and the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) have developed a digital tool to support prison staff in categorising prisoners to the appropriate level of security conditions.

Built in partnership with the Home Office and drawing on multi-agency data, the tool will flag high risk Serious and Organised Crime (SOC) nominals to prison staff. This supports the commitment in the SOC Strategy of ensuring priority SOC offenders in custody are risk-assessed, categorised and allocated to the right prisons with the right security measures and capability to prevent and disrupt their offending.

HMPPS tested a prototype version of the tool last Summer, and a number of SOC nominals were picked up on the basis of the new data. Following evaluation of the pilot, the Justice Secretary announced his support for the tool with additional funding to build an improved version. HMPPS have continued to work closely with the Home Office and law enforcement to secure data sharing agreements and refine the tool to better assess SOC threat.

HMPPS plan to run a live pilot across eight prisons in London and the South East in the Spring, and a key part of the this will be assessing whether the tool can support the effective management of SOC nominals in custody.

For more information please contact Abigail.Farley@justice.gov.uk

Operation Zeus: Managing risk through the CJS

Operation Zeus is an example of cross-agency working to ensure robust risk management is put in place across the Criminal Justice System (CJS).

The investigation focussed on large- scale drug dealing in North Wales in December last year. The operation resulted in 28 defendants being charged with conspiracy to supply cocaine. Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) Serious and Organised Crime (SOC) team in Wales worked with the police, the local SOC partnership board, Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Probation management to develop pre-court and post sentence processes to support the effective risk management of a mapped Organised Crime Group (OCG) network through the CJS. The team also worked with the Community Rehabilitation Company and the South West Intelligence teams within HMPPS to ensure relevant information and intelligence was shared to support the management of this OCG network within the custodial environment. This allowed all parts of the CJS to understand the risks posed and the lines of accountability and responsibility throughout their sentence.

For more information please contact

Louise.Forman@noms.gov.uk

Community resilience  

Social action projects in Merseyside and Cheshire

Communities in Speke in Merseyside, and Runcorn and Widnes in Cheshire, are the focus of targeted engagement designed to build community well-being and strengthen their resilience to Serious and Organised Crime (SOC).

Earlier this month Speke held a Participatory Budgeting event which was attended by 300 members of the Speke community. A ‘Dragons Den’ style competition assessed funding bids from local sports and community groups for initiatives that seek to improve the local area and keep children and young people away from SOC. A pot of £26,000 drawn from Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) funding was made available and bids totalling £59,000 were made.

The ‘Speke-Up’ Community Group comprised of local residents, made the decisions about which groups should be allocated funding to deliver activity in their local area. Local media including the BBC were present and filmed the event. There has been very positive feedback from the community with the work of the Local Policing Team led by Insp Paul Holden, Mutual Gain (Dr Andrew Fisher), South Liverpool Homes and Onward Homes has receiving special mention. They have worked tirelessly to make this event successful and the Speke-Up Community Group is expected to go from strength to strength.

Meanwhile in nearby Cheshire, Runcorn and Widnes have been working with faith-based community charity ‘Redeem our Communities’ (ROC) to start a process of transformational change in their local areas. Both areas recently held community consultation events known as ‘ROC conversations’ where over 200 local residents, partners and local businesses attended.

This consultation process not only gave the community the opportunity to highlight their local concerns but gave residents and businesses the chance to make people aware of the assets they can offer the community in order to facilitate social action projects, such as cash, people, transport and venues. As with Speke, both areas will host similar ‘Dragons Den’ events and preparations for those are currently in train. Again, community feedback has so far been positive. ROC founder, Debra Green OBE, Chief Inspector Sarah Heath from Runcorn, Chief Inspector Simon Parsonage from Widnes, and their respective local policing teams have done exceptional work and committed many hours of their time to make these events a success.

For more information please contact Andrew.J.O’Connor@merseyside.police.uk

SOC prevent and safeguarding

Northumbria’s SOC Divert ‘Get Connected’ Programme

Northumbria Police are working with a range of partners, including the Enthusiasm Trust, to deliver an innovative diversion programme, designed to prevent siblings and associates of Organised Crime Group (OCG) members from becoming involved in SOC in and around Newcastle.

The first stage of this programme is already underway, and has involved the identification of a cohort of 19 individuals at high risk of being drawn into SOC. They will be targeted with bespoke interventions carried out by seven organisations, including a ‘deep dive’ review of existing interventions, one-to-one mentoring, group workshops, parental engagement and universal youth work.

The programme is designed to be sustainable by coordinating, training and harnessing individuals from law enforcement and third sector organisations through a project within this programme called “Get Connected”. Activity to date includes:

• Five “Get Connected” toolkit sessions, attended by 50 individuals from over 30 local organisations. The inputs have included topics such as identifying young people being drawn into SOC, Gangs, County Lines and understanding the voice of the child through Adverse Child Experiences.
• An intensive mentoring training day
• ‘Schools Voice’ which involves pupil surveys at three schools around the city (age range 11-13 years) prior to group work within the schools by The Enthusiasm Trust on the above-mentioned themes.

The Youth Early Intervention Assessment Hub in Newcastle is under review to work alongside the ‘Get Connected’ programme and other interventions. Work is also ongoing to embed the programme as business as usual within the City referrals system to identify and divert those at risk of being drawn into SOC.

For more information please contact

Harish.Dutt@homeoffice.gov.uk

Golden rules for effective sharing information

Information sharing is essential for effective safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people so here is a reminder of the seven golden rules for sharing information:

1. Remember that the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Data Protection Act 2018 and human rights law are not barriers to justified information sharing, but provide a framework to ensure that personal information about living individuals is shared appropriately.

2. Be open and honest with the individual from the outset about why, what, how and with whom information will, or could, be shared; and seek their agreement, unless it is unsafe or inappropriate to do so.

3. Seek advice from other practitioners or your information governance lead, if you are in any doubt about sharing the information, without disclosing the identity of the individual where possible.

4. Where possible share information with consent and respect the wishes of those who do not consent to having their information shared. Under the GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018 you may share information without consent if, in your judgement, there is a lawful basis to do so, such as where safety may be at risk.

5. Base your information sharing decisions on considerations of the safety and well-being of the individual and others who may be affected by their actions.

6. Ensure that the information you share is:

• a) necessary for the purpose for which you are sharing it.
• b) only shared with with those individuals who need to have it.
• c) is accurate and up to-date.
• d) is shared in a timely and secure fashion.

7. Keep a record of your decision and the reasons for it – whether it is to share information or not. If you decide to share, then record what you have shared, with whom and for what purpose.

More detailed guidance can be found in the Information sharing advice for safeguarding practitioners guidance.

Changing young lives through sport

Community Cougars Foundation (CCF) is a registered charity which offers a combination of approaches to reach young people at risk of being drawn into Serious and Organised Crime (SOC). This includes sport, accredited learning, adventure education and issue-based group work that seeks to develop young people’s understanding of SOC and strengthen their resilience and self-efficacy.

CCF have tailor-made a four-week programme for young people in the Bradford area, which not only draws on these key aspects but also involves working with local schools. The programme has had some real engagement success by getting local youngsters involved in playing rugby for the first time, and delivering coaching sessions through ex-England Rugby League international, Saima Hussain. Sport is an effective way to help strengthen young people’s communication skills and having built that initial confidence, CCF follows this up with interactive workshops which raises awareness amongst the cohort of key SOC-related issues including County Lines, anti-social behaviour, child sexual exploitation, grooming and cyber crime.

CCF have worked with a range of other local partners to facilitate after-school sports activities and Saima has invited professional sports clubs to attend these sessions to assess the young people’s performance and aptitude and identify the stars of the future. The clubs are then encouraged to offer additional support and sporting apprenticeships.

The programme is supported by funding from the Home Office SOC Community Co-ordinator pilot and links the third sector with educational, voluntary and private sectors. It has served as a good example of how to design and deliver a whole-system intervention programme that reduces the risk of participants being drawn into criminal exploitation or down a pathway of escalating criminal behaviour. Feedback from the schools involved in the programme has been very positive and reinforced the value that third sector organisations can offer in landing risk-awareness messaging with young people, that may not necessarily resonate as effectively if delivered exclusively through teachers or other statutory agencies.

Reflecting on the programme’s success, Saima said

it’s fantastic to be able to work directly with schools and sports sector partners to use sports in a way that motivates and inspires them to help change the aspirations and lives of young people.

For more information please contact Saima Hussain at saimacommunitycougars@mail.com

Data analytics   

The DAMARC – Helping us understand how we do data analysis and enable continuous capability improvement

The Data Analysis Model and Application Reference Model (DAMARC) grew from the question posed to the Communications Data and Lawful Intercept (CDLI) partnership “What is going on in Data Analytics?”. Without a common definition of what was meant by “Data Analytics” it was impossible to answer the question. The lack of a common language to describe what partners across the Law Enforcement and National Security community do with data to support our operational activities makes it very difficult to exchange ideas, identify best practice and improve performance and effectiveness.

The CDLI partnership is a multi- disciplinary Home Office, National Crime Agency and National Technical Assistance Centre collaboration providing the UK law enforcement and intelligence community with communications data and interception capabilities as permitted under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. The DAMARC has been developed by the CDLI partnership in support of the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism (OSCT) to firstly; provide a common process model and language to describe how organisations conduct data analysis from end-to-end, and secondly to capture how organisations do these processes, and in particular cataloguing the applications they use and the roles and training of their people. The DAMARC common data analysis process model and language has been developed and endorsed by the Home Office. It has also been endorsed by the NPCC Intelligence portfolio for use by all police forces in England and Wales. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and Police Scotland are also adopting it. At a regional and national level DAMARC is being used to support data analysis capability development by ROCUs, the NCA and intelligence organisations in the Home Office Immigration Enforcement and Border Force.

The model is being used by organisations to describe how they combine their people and technology to execute the processes. Police forces, ROCUs, Counter Terrorism Units (CTU) and national organisations are currently identifying the applications they use for each process and populating the DAMARC catalogue which is available on line. This will provide valuable knowledge about popular, useful and economical applications and support capability development decisions.

If your organisation is not yet involved, by all means review the DAMARC and contact us to continuously improve your data analysis capability.

The DAMARC. Visit https://mood.cte.cd.pnn.police.uk/damarc/default.htm to explore the model, the definitions and common language for processes and the applications and tools used by organisations to conduct them. (Available to computers connected to the PSN).