Wildlife crime counts 2.

Recently RSPB released a press release saying that since lock down was introduced they have been inundated with 56 reports of raptor persecution. They do not indicate how many of those incidents have been reported to the police, but I suspect that most have. A few weeks previously the League Against Cruel Sports (LACS) were highlighting that they had logged almost five hundred incidents of illegal hunting.

The two releases of information together highlight the difficulties of counting crime. It is a well known tactic, in policing, to talk about incidents when you want to talk a problem up and to talk about crimes when you wish to minimise the scale of the problem. For those who are not aware, an incident is created whenever a matter is reported to the police. This might, for example, be a report of a dead badger on the roadside that the caller thinks may have been left there, having been baited. A crime however, is only recorded where there is some evidence that a criminal offence has been committed. So the report of that dead badger will only become a crime if there are indications that it has been baited rather than, perhaps, hit by a passing vehicle.

The police have many years experience of manipulating crime figures. It became such an issue that some years ago reams of guidance on the recording of incidents and crimes were produced. It does of course relate to all sorts of crime and not just wildlife crime. Just one of the area's it delves into is how many crimes should be recorded when there are multiple offences. For instance where somebody walks down the road and scratches five cars, the guidance dictates that, it is likely that only one crime is committed. What is known as a continuing offence. The same guidance has to be applied to wildlife crime so if three dead buzzards are found around a poisoned bait, then again, it is likely that this will be recorded as one crime. The extent and complexity of this crime recording guidance provides jobs for many but has also led to greater transparency on the extent of crime.

It is important that those who are charged with or choose to involve themselves in the investigation of wildlife crime know the extent of the problem they are dealing with. It is no good conservationists counting, say, the destruction of three bats roosts on a development site as three crimes if the police, by application of formal guidance record it as a single crime.

To gauge the extent of wildlife crime the police should be able to provide information on how many incidents and crimes are reported in any given area. To do so removes any suggestion that figures provided by non-government organisations, all of whom naturally, have agenda's are incorrect, having been manipulated.         

I have previously mentioned that the National Police Chiefs Council in their 2018-2021 wildlife crime strategy said that they would look to introduce the recording of some wildlife crimes. Progress is long overdue. Only then we will be allowed insight into just how many of the reports recorded by RSPB and LACS revealed evidence of criminal offending.