What is going on?
| Date | 16 September 2019 |
| Pages | 161-167 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JCRPP-09-2019-056 |
| Published date | 16 September 2019 |
| Author | Martin O’Neill |
Martin O’Neill
What is going on?
This special edition on UK homicide investigations cannot be more timely, given the current
landscape within the Criminal Justice System in England and Wales. One could be forgiven for
thinking that British criminal justice raises the same problems on an almost cyclical basis, with
recurringproblems manifestingin the form of miscarriagesof justice (MOJs), poor investigationsof
rape and domestic abuse reports, poor investigation of apparent or actual homicides, and
ongoing issues with one of the areas of practice considered to be fundamental to justice
and designedto reduce MOJs: the disclosure regime underpinned bythe Criminal Procedure and
Investigations Act (CPIA), codes of practice and various explanatory and guidance documents.
There is a history of high-profile failings that serve to place poor police practice in the spotlight and
amplifyin a negative way how the public see policeabilities to solvemajor crime. As Brookmanand
Innes (2013) suggest, often how police investigate major crimes is used as a “barometer”of police
success. In contrast, the way police have honed investigative practicein relation to major crime
investigation is often held as the gold standard for all investigations. Despite recurring problems,
MOJs can variously be caused by corrupt practices, poor decision making, compliance drift
(see Innes, 2003) or investigative incompetence variously fueled by neglect, laziness, lack of training,
lack of resources, tiredness,lack of supervision or lack of experience to perform the duty required
(as has always been the possibility). What is interesting, however, is that causes resulting in the
same outcomes can changeover time. To thatlist of possible causesabove, we can nowadd other
variables,such as governmentausteritymeasures, staff withhigher workloadsexpected to do more
with less, an ever-increasing tidal wave of technological advancement that can overload stretched
resources, a higher public expectation that the police are now professionalized and thus more
capable than ever, and an increased level of scrutiny unwelcome in policing circles due to such
problems (Roycroft, 2019).
Brookman et al. (2018) suggest that the number of homicide cases solved in the USA has
declined significantly from above 90 percent in the 1960s to under 60 percent in 2016. In the UK,
they demonstrate that the decline is less; from 94 percent in the 1960s to an average of 90
percent since the turn of the century. That said, a recent The Guardian article, based upon
freedom of information requests replied to by only 20 out of 43 police services, suggests that
detected homicides fell from 83 percent in the year 2010–2011, to 74 percent in 2015–2016 and
67 percent in 2017–18 (Dodd, 2019). Whilst the statistics cannot be relied upon, because of the
response rate and potential for inaccuracy, possible explanations for any decline in homicide
detections are the increasing complexity of cases, the reduction of resources available to
investigate, the capacity of investigations to be able to cope with high-volume information
generated in homicide investigations (see Allsop in this special edition) and capacity to deal with
the rise in technology. Maguire et al. (2010) observe that the traditional academic view of
homicide investigation has been that two important factors contribute to whether a crime is
detected or not. Those factors are environmental and organizational. Environmental factors are
usually understood as issues seen as the demographics of a case, such as location, community
characteristics, type of victim (including gender, race and lifestyle) and case complexity.
Organizational factors usually comprise the nature and quality of the investigative response,
competence, workloads, policies, practices and procedures, experience and so on. Others have
described these as being extrinsic factors (environmental), as opposed to intrinsic
(organizational), and have suggested in the past that investigations are usually hampered by
environmental/extrinsic factors and there is little that investigative effort (organizational/intrinsic)
can do to improve matters and increase detections (echoing the Greenwood et al. (1977) study,
Martin O’Neill is based at the
Department of Policing,
Canterbury Christ Church
University, Canterbury, UK.
DOI 10.1108/JCRPP-09-2019-056VOL. 5 NO. 3 2019, pp.161-167, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 2056-3841
j
JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGICALRESEARCH,POLICY ANDPRACTICE
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