The home secretary has commissioned the development of an automated national police vetting system that will continuously conduct background checks for police officers in England and Wales.
James Cleverly wants to replicate a system that has been introduced in airports, which continuously checks the names of all staff with access to restricted areas against criminal and non-criminal databases, according to The Times.
Earlier this year an independent inquiry into the abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by off-duty Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens called for a radical overhaul of police vetting procedures.
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Couzens was able to continue serving as a police officer despite having been reported to the police for indecent exposure eight times.
In January the National Police Chiefs’ Council published the results of a manual check of all 307,452 officers, staff and volunteers against the Police National Database.
The check was initiated after it emerged the Metropolitan Police failed to act on allegations made against David Carrick, who was jailed for life last year after admitting 85 offences over a 17-year period, including rape and sexual assault.
The Times reported that Cleverly has contracted Maimuri, a Manchester-based software firm that developed the airport vetting software, to explore how a similar system could be introduced across England and Wales’ 42 police forces.
In a letter to the company, Cleverly said: “Public confidence in policing has suffered as a result of the negative actions of serving police officers. A series of works to improve the approach police have to vetting and ongoing integrity checking of all the police ‘family’ needs to be carried out. To date, work has been manual and [it is] not pragmatic to continue without automation and other improvements which could be made.”
A Home Office spokesman told the paper: “The public rightly expect the police to recruit those who exemplify the highest standards and that these are maintained throughout their service.
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“In the three years since Sarah Everard’s murder, we have worked tirelessly to improve standards in policing and kick out officers who are not fit to serve our communities, including improving the dismissals process and strengthening vetting. We are now going further by working with the police to develop a continuous integrity screening system, which will help forces quickly identify where action needs to be taken against individuals.”
