The pleasure of writing for Security Management Today (SMT) in reporting on the Association of Chief Police Officers’ (ACPO) annual intruder alarm statistics has been mine for the past three years now. This year is somewhat different, as it’s the last time the figures will be collated in relation to calendar years. From hereon in, we intend to issue the statistics at a time directly in line with the financial and planning year.
The ACPO statistics just issued for 2005 are encouraging for the industry, for the police service and, indeed, for myself as chairman of the ACPO Security Systems Working Group. A grand total of 1,181,599 security systems were reported as having a Unique Reference Number (URN) provided by police during the past 12 months. That represents an increase of nearly 20,000 systems over 2004.
Those same systems generated 368,105 false alarms in 2005 – 63,000 fewer than in the previous survey year.
Overall, the average number of false activations per system – the preferred ‘measure of achievement’ for the industry and, therefore, the Working Group – fell to the unprecedented low of 0.33 (from 0.39 in 2004). At the same time, the total number of genuine alarms remained steady at just over 40,000.
In addition, the number of alarm activations resulting in arrest appears to have fallen very sharply, from 3,191 down to 1,900. That said, several forces were unable to provide this statistic for 2005, so the downward trend may have been slightly exaggerated.
Impressively, 37 of the 43 police forces across England and Wales reported significant drops in false activations.
At this stage, it is perhaps worth reminding ourselves of how far we have come in the past ten years (see table 1 on page 60). In 1996, the 772,453 security systems with URNs generated over one million false alarms – equivalent to a rate of 1.36 false alarms per installation. Since then, the number of installed security systems has risen by 53%, while the number of false alarms has fallen by 65%. The number of genuine alarms has fallen, too, along with the number of subsequent arrests.
Reading between the lines
As is the case with all statistics, it’s possible to draw a wide variety of conclusions from the ACPO figures. However, I would defy anyone to suggest with any degree of seriousness that they do not show significant progress.
Also, like any good set of statistics, the questions they provoke are more numerous than the answers they provide. Is there a causal link between the burgeoning number of security systems and reductions in both domestic and commercial burglary? To what extent are these improvements accredited to better design and manufacturing procedures, improved installation, enhanced monitoring regimes, higher standards or better inspection?
Is the steady fall in the number of genuine activations and arrests a sign that security systems are an effective deterrent in the fight against crime? Do the falls in arrest numbers owe more to a reduction in prompt police attendance on sight?
Every security professional will no doubt harbour his or her own preferred answers to these questions, based on their own perceptions and the information they have to hand. Alas, at the present time we are not in a position to ‘unpack’ the figures and answer such important questions in more detail.
On the police side, this owes much to variations in the recording processes and technologies used by different forces, which makes the gathering of any unified set of police service statistics a challenge to say the least. On the industry side of the equation, commercial considerations can make competing organisations reluctant to share too much detailed information.
If we are in agreement that statistics such as those listed are important, and that the ability to diagnose trends within them would be of value to us, we need to pursue a joint approach to data gathering. An approach enabling the service and the industry to test a variety of hypotheses and then discover – to a much higher degree of precision – what has the most impact on the performance of systems, and how they might be improved still further.
I’m very pleased to say that we should be taking forward steps in this area within the coming year.
Milestones for the industry
2005 saw the passing of two major milestones. One was the introduction of the new European Standards – not without its stresses for many in the sector, it must be said. ACPO allowed for a three-month ‘period of grace’ following the Standards’ introduction to increase the likelihood that the industry could adapt, while also consciously incentivising companies who had made the biggest strides towards adopting the new regulations.
The other milestone is the reduction in the threshold for losing a police response, from five false activations within 12 months to three. That particular ruling has been in effect since 1 April 2006, and should help to weed out the worst offending systems. It should also encourage customers to upgrade to the more recent standards, while not penalising those systems that are problem-free.
ACPO policy is all about striking the right balance between the reassurance value of security systems, their ability to prevent, deter and detect crime and the wasteful use of valuable police resources in attending false activations. This is a balance which demands thorough review on a regular basis. However, I expect the new threshold to be in place for at least the next three years.
In fact, the future for security systems across the upcoming three-year period is altogether more certain than is the future of the police service. Home Office-prompted reorganisation of the 43 police forces in England and Wales into a smaller number – probably between 12 and 20 – seems almost inevitable. This will doubtless reduce the number of local variations from ACPO policy which greatly frustrate some members of the security industry. It will certainly provide opportunities for the Working Group to increase compliance and consistency.
Restructuring: likely outcomes
I am no better qualified than anyone else in terms of being able to predict the consequences of this reorganisation, but I can tell the readers of Security Management Today how I plan to take forward the opportunity it presents for reducing variations in policy.
First, I can see no particular reason why individual parts of larger, more strategic forces should operate their alarms policy any differently. Many variations to the ACPO Security Systems Policy are the by-product of a system whereby each of the 43 forces exercise operational independence and, while paying heed to national policy and guidance, would have few qualms about departing from it for local reasons. This will not continue within the new structure to the same extent. Indeed, the difficulties of implementing nationally-recognised Best Practice in 43 independent organisations might have been a factor underpinning the police service restructure.
Second, police forces going through a major reorganisation will – to put it bluntly – not have intruder alarms policies at the top of their list of priorities. Through the ACPO Security Systems Working Group, we can make it easier for the new organisations to take a well-established national policy ‘off the shelf’ and focus their efforts on ensuring that the administrative arrangements supporting the policy are as efficient and effective as possible.
Finally, within the next two years I believe we will be in a better position than ever before to explain to the new organisations not simply how to deal with alarms in the most effective manner, but why they should do so – because the best possible balance is being struck between what security systems provide in reassurance, deterrents, crime prevention and detection and their cost to the service.
Responding to activations
For reasons not entirely clear to me, but which are probably historical, the police service has always carried out first response duties for intruder alarms. This fact is used as a selling point by the industry – on rare occasions somewhat less scrupulously than I would like – and is not a task chief constables seem in a hurry to relinquish. However, there is a view that the provision of police response – at no cost to either the end user or the industry – does not create a commercial incentive to be efficient in producing, installing and monitoring security systems.
To my mind, a system wherein the cost of attending false alarms is borne by those responsible for them would be more simple and elegant. The police service does not charge for attending false alarm activations. Doing so would create an additional bureaucracy I’m sure we could all do without.
That being the case, the inclusion of response as a service provided by the security systems sector has a definite logic to it. At some point in the future, the process of review and restructure may lead to a certain question being raised: “Should the police service continue to respond to alarm activations at all?”
In most countries around the world, first response is provided by a security company, with police attendance only if a crime has been committed. Would the industry embrace a gradual move in this direction? Could it do so?
At the end of the day it’s only a talking point, but you never know.
