How widespread is corruption in our police forces? A report today by the Independent Police Complaints Commission reveals more than 8,500 complaints about corruption have been recorded by forces in England and Wales in three years.
The IPCC investigates only a fraction of the corruption complaints, owing to its limited remit and resources, leaving individual forces to investigate their own officers in the vast majority of cases.
The report has collated data for all forces in England and Wales between 2008 and 2011. During that period, 8,542 allegations of corruption were recorded by forces. Of those, 837 were referred to the IPCC. The watchdog only had the resources or powers to independently investigate 21 of the most serious cases.
The number of corruption referrals are slowly creeping up too - from 9% in 2008/09 to 14% of all referrals in 2010/11.
In total, 18 officers were charged and prosecuted following independent or "managed" IPCC investigations; 13 were found guilty. These allegations included rape and sexual assault, the fraudulent use of corporate credit cards, perverting the course of justice, the provision of false statements, and the misuse of police databases. Eleven of those found guilty were constables, one was a sergeant and the other a commander.
This is how the referrals break down.
A larger number of cases were dealt with internally, with 87 police officers facing misconduct hearings within their forces – in 87% of those cases, the allegations of corruption were upheld. However, the most common punishment was a "written warning". The next most likely sanction was involved placing the officers under supervision or providing them with more training.
Only 14 officers – 18% of the total found guilty at misconduct hearings – were dismissed from the police or required to resign.
Data summary
Download the data