UK police failing to perform background checks

March 2, 2012

report came out of the UK this week that claimed UK police were failing to perform simple background checks, which was allowing foreign rapists to “slip through the net”. In many cases, officers failed even to ask about previous convictions because they thought the process was too difficult. It seems a strange and shocking revelation considering the ever-increasing importance of performing background checks in today’s dangerous environment. The report exposing serious failings with the way rape investigations are conducted by police follows a spate of horrific crimes committed by foreign nationals – many of whom had convictions before arriving in Britain. Furthermore, a recent Home Office review found police fail to run checks on tens of thousands of EU nationals every year – with only 15 per cent of the 30,000 EU nationals arrested in Britain having their criminal histories explored in 2011. What issues arise from this? There are several serious issues that come from such complacency, including:

  • Police may be unaware a foreign national has an extensive history of sex offences.
  • The alarm may therefore not be raised when a suspect on a wanted list overseas is picked up in Britain.
  • It might also mean a sentencing judge is unaware if the criminal in the dock is a convicted rapist, murderer or paedophile in their home country.
The report cites the case of an unnamed EU national who broke into the house of an 89-year-old woman and raped her. He was arrested on four previous occasions and at no point was his background checked. Rightly so, the report resulted in the immediate call for an “urgent and all force review” of the use of foreign intelligence to evaluate public risk, and there is hope that these issues are rectified immediately. Immigration disputes This report indirectly brings into the open the laws behind immigration and questions whether the UK is too soft on allowing EU residents to cross the border to live and work in the United Kingdom. This is, of course, a topic of huge significance in the US right now as the Republican nominations process nears its conclusion.
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